Pinochet Part 3: Searching for the Disappeared

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It's September 2023

in Santiago, Chile.

We're on Cerrochena, a hill overlooking the city.

This was once the site of Villa Grimaldi, one of the Chilean army's most notorious interrogation and torture centers.

Now it's a place of remembrance.

Guitar strings pluck out the melody of Chile's national dance, La Cueca.

An old woman dressed in black walks slowly across the baked earth on top of the hill.

She holds a plain white men's shirt in her hands.

On the ground by her feet are hundreds of blackamite photographs, some nearly 50 years old.

They show the faces of husbands, fathers, sons,

men and boys who were taken from their homes and never seen again.

As the song begins, the woman raises the white shirt in front of her, holding it by the cuff and shoulder.

The limp, lifeless ghost of a dance partner.

She begins to move.

The air billows through the loose fabric, filling out its contours, as though it still clings to the back of the young man who once wore it.

La Cueca, traditionally performed by couples on Chile's Independence Day, has become La Cueca Sola.

And it has been danced alone by this woman and hundreds like her since the early days of Pinochet's dictatorship.

Under the general, they couldn't speak out against the regime,

they couldn't demand to know what had happened to their husbands, fathers, or sons.

But they could dance.

Even today, barely a bone has been found to offer the bereaved some solace.

Many of the men in the black and white photographs remain desiparacidos,

the disappeared.

From the Noiser Network, this is the final part of the Pinochet story.

And this is Real Dictators.

Previously Previously in the Pinochet story, we saw the career army man work his way steadily up to the ranks.

He moved into the top job of commander-in-chief just two weeks before leading a coup d'état against the socialist president Salvador Allende in September 1973.

Now a military junta is in charge of Chile, and General Pinochet is at its head.

Across the country, tens of thousands of socialists have been rounded up into makeshift detention centers and torture camps,

and many have been slaughtered by Pinochet's killing squad, the caravan of death.

The general is determined to stamp out Marxism.

It's a war he will keep on fighting, both at home and abroad, until the very end of his 17-year rule.

But how does it all end for Pinochet himself,

and will he ever be punished for his crimes?

Let's find out.

It's November 1973.

Two months have passed since the coup, and Chile has already been changed forever.

The sudden arrest, torture, and killing of thousands of citizens has shaken the country to its core.

As 1974 approaches, Pinochet believes his most dangerous enemies have been dealt with.

He's certainly not taking his foot off the gas, but the emphasis on extreme public violence does lessen.

Professor Mark Ensalaco.

The worst of the summary executions where people are shot and left on the side of the road or thrown in a Mapocho River that runs through Santiago.

That's over.

The borders are opening.

People who they allow to go in exile go in exile.

Now, Pinochet's focus switches to molding Chile into the country he wants it to be.

Towards the end of 1973, a new security service is founded, the National Intelligence Directorate, or DINA.

DINA is led by General Manuel Contreras, a lifelong military man and loyal Pinochet supporter.

He will be joined by officers who've just come off the caravan of death.

And DINA is backed by the resources of a far more powerful security agency, the CIA.

The human rights abuses committed in the early months of Pinochet's regime have been widely reported.

But, with eyes on the Cold War, President Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger are unwavering in their support.

Senior analyst at the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C.,

Peter Kornblu.

Not only was Henry Kissinger the architect of overthrowing Allende, he was the enabler-in-chief of helping General Augusto Pinochet consolidate what was clearly a bloody dictatorship from day one.

You know, even after more than a thousand people had been murdered, tortured to death, summarily executed, disappeared over the first five or six months of the Pinochet regime.

Kissinger actually sent the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Vernon Walters, to meet with Pinochet in February of 1974 and to express the interests of Nixon and Kissinger in welcoming Pinochet and offering discrete aid for his success.

And it was at that meeting that Pinochet explicitly asked the deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Vernon Walters, for help in developing a Chilean secret police service.

And Dina became not only the most repressive force in Chile, but one of the most renowned repressive forces around the world.

Even the U.S.

intelligence community referred to it as a modern-day Gestapo.

That hard core within the military that pushed for the coup from the day Allende was elected.

Now they're going to make up the core of DINA.

They're going to carry out that mission to extirbate Marxism from the left for three years.

Chile goes from being a war zone to a police state, but it's underground.

It's secret.

The people are disappearing.

Under the leadership of General Contreras, the new agency gets to work.

They create a network of secret prisons and torture camps, where their activities can be carried out behind closed doors.

For Pinochet to have complete power, Dina must continue what the caravan of death started.

creating a climate of such fear that no one dare rebel.

And for that, they'll need willing accomplices among the people.

Journalist John Bartlett.

There was a hatred of people who thought differently, without a doubt.

There was a hatred of people who'd supported the Ayendo government and who had kind of leftist sympathies, and I think a fear of it as well.

And so those two things combined to make it...

a quite a powerful cocktail.

With the country so bitterly divided, it isn't difficult to encourage ordinary people to turn on one another.

This idea of informing on one another is something that happens a lot in autocratic regimes.

If your neighbor is doing anything that's at all suspicious, or even if they're not, you can inform on them.

You can tell the secret police.

And such was the paranoia around kind of who was a leftist and who was potentially kind of trying to agitate.

Those people often ended up being persecuted as well.

The number of political prisoners in Chile is phenomenal.

With Dina busy weeding out real and imagined opponents of the regime, Pinochet can turn his attention to rebuilding Chile's economy, and he thinks he knows just the men to take charge of the nation's finances.

In the early 1970s, a group of young Chilean economists were sent to Chicago to study under the renowned libertarian theoretician Milton Friedman.

Since returning home to Chile, full of free market ideas, the so-called Chicago boys have been advising banks and businesses.

Now it's their turn to shine.

Neoliberalism is a relatively radical school of free market economics.

It's the idea that the private sector picks up where the state can't reach and kind of provides for people's needs.

The Chicago boys who studied at the University of Chicago, Those ideas were brought to Chile.

The theory goes that you need a sort of a rupture, a sort of big shock effectively, which is why economists like Naomi Klein have coined this phrase, the shock doctrine.

You need to basically impose these kind of radical free market ideals in the wake of a shock.

This idea that within a certain period of this shock happening, in the case of Chile, of course, the shock that the shock doctrine refers to was the coup d'état in 1973.

You can start to impose these radical free market principles on an economy, which is what they did.

And that was how the economy was structured.

Influenced by Friedman's ideas, the Chicago Boys impose a range of sweeping reforms on the Chilean economy.

Under this authoritarian regime, there is an emphasis, in economics at least, on reducing the role of the state, deregulation, privatization.

These changes are often referred to as constituting the Chilean economic miracle.

Initially, they do actually seem miraculous.

Under the Chicago boys, the country achieves a kind of economic stability, even growth.

There's hope that Chile can be prosperous again.

But this is not experienced across society.

Greater wealth for some, yes, but also increased inequality and with it, social tension.

And as the 1970s roll on, the divide between rich and poor grows wider.

Nowhere is the disparity more evident than in the new lifestyle embraced by Pinochet and his wife, Lucia Iriad.

Chile's first couple are enjoying the perks that come with dictatorship.

Their opulent home and the outskirts of Santiago place host to extravagant soires.

They travel the world on private jets and helicopters, wear the finest clothes, eat the best food, and buy each other lavish gifts, particularly wine and jewelry.

Privately, some citizens grumble about their extravagant tastes, but few dare to speak up about it.

The full extent of the Pinochet's indulgences won't come to light for decades.

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On the world stage, Augusto Pinochet is an increasingly popular figure.

Outwardly, his reforms appear to be yielding results.

Many world leaders seem willing to overlook the rumors of human rights abuses, if the result is economic stability in Chile.

It was Kissinger's policy to embrace the Pinochet regime, to make sure that the unconstitutional military dictator, the policy was to make sure he did succeed.

and consolidated his rule and just wanton embrace of this vile, ugly, kind of classic caricature of a dictator who was killing people right and left in this beautiful country that was known for its wine, for its mountains, for its ocean, for its poetry.

With his stock riding high internationally and Dina keeping dissenting voices quiet at home, Pinochet takes a bold step.

No longer content to take on Marxism solely within his own borders, he now sets his sights on the rest of South America.

After all, leftist Chileans in exile are, to his mind, still a stain on his country's reputation.

In November 1975, Pinochet joins a new covert intelligence collaboration, Operation Condor.

It's a multinational alliance between dictatorships in Chile, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and later Bolivia.

These countries share intelligence resources, helping each other to track down and crush their enemies, wherever they may be hiding.

Pinochet wastes no time putting forward his own list of targets, starting with his former boss.

Operation Condor is a plot where they're going to secretly go out and start killing people outside the country, right?

So General Carlos Pratz, his superior, who was forced to resign as commander-in-chief to make possible coup, blows him up in Argentina.

But the murder of General Pratz is just the beginning.

Operation Kondor soon extends even further afield.

Officially, the United States isn't part of the alliance.

Unofficially, the CIA has been sharing intelligence with its regimes.

But how will the U.S.

react when Operation Kondor's violence hits much closer to home?

It's September the 21st, 1976, just after 9:30 a.m.

In Washington, D.C., the traffic is typically heavy.

Orlando Letellia is a Chilean exile and an outspoken critic of Pinochet's regime.

Today, he's on his way to work at the Institute for Policy Studies.

He's sharing a ride with an American colleague named Ronnie Moffat and her husband, Michael.

While they chat, the radio plays quietly in the background.

As they pull onto Embassy Row, near the Sheridan Circle roundabout, there's a strange click from beneath Letelia's seat.

Then there's a massive explosion.

The car is ripped apart by a bomb.

Orlando Letelia dies within minutes, minutes, his legs severed from his torso.

Ronnie Moffat is rushed to hospital with the shrapnel wound to the throat.

There she too succumbs to her injuries.

Only her husband, sitting in the back seat, survives the attack.

He is thrown from the vehicle by the blast and escapes with a head wound.

The assassination prompts immediate international outcry.

Since an American citizen died in the attack, the U.S.

government has no choice but to respond.

The White House condemns it as an act of terrorism.

An investigation is launched to identify and punish those responsible.

But one name comes to the fore, and it doesn't sit well with the CIA.

Michael Townley is an American citizen who spent some of his childhood in Chile.

In 1970, he returned there at Henry Kissinger's request.

During Allende's rule, he worked with groups opposed to the then president, and now it appears he's a fully signed-up DINA agent, working for General Pinochet.

What's more, he doesn't just have Orlando Letelier's blood on his hands, but that of General Pratt's as well.

Townley's involvement makes it almost impossible for the CIA to deny knowledge of Operation Condor.

It took two years for the FBI to identify Dina as the terrorist agency that had committed this atrocity,

even though for the previous two years, similar things have been happening in other parts of the world where it was clear that Pinochet's agents were murdering his opponents and not his Marxist opponents, but his military colleagues, such as General Carlos Pratz in Argentina, and the vice president of the Christian Democratic Party, Bernardo Layton, who, along with his wife, was shot in the back walking down the streets of Rome in an assassination attempt that had been orchestrated by the Chilean secret police, Tina.

The USA's apparent links with Latin American dictatorships are becoming a problem, not least when it comes to their European allies.

The CIA was worried that they would get blamed by their own allies in Europe for international assassination operations that the Southern Cone secret police services were carrying out.

Why?

Because these secret services were tied closely to the CIA.

And so when the CIA began to intercept intelligence that these operations in countries like France and Spain were being planned, this was going to really cause a lot of problems.

And when those intelligence services in France and Spain came to the CI and said, did you know about this?

Aren't these your guys?

The CI would be in a really difficult position because they did know about it, and these were their guys.

The assassination of Orlando Letelia turns out to be a grave miscalculation by Pinochet.

How can the U.S.

continue to support him now?

Under American American interrogation, Michael Townley spills his guts.

He implicates several individuals in the assassination plot, including high-ranking members of the Chilean regime.

But Pinochet has a trick or two up his sleeve.

In 1978, he passes an amnesty law.

It protects military personnel who committed human rights abuses in the aftermath of the coup.

Then in 1980, he rewrites the Chilean constitution, granting himself sweeping executive powers.

The ideals of the Chicago Boys and the Chilean right were sort of encoded in the 1980 constitution, which was drafted without popular input, of course, by the kind of closest confidants of the military junta.

And it managed to enshrine these sort of free market, Catholic, conservative, right-wing ideals, really.

That's still the constitution today.

To give the new rules a stamp of popular approval, Pinochet holds a rather dubious plebiscite.

The Constitution was ratified by a fraudulent referendum.

You know, agents of the state were told to vote multiple times in its favour.

You know, there was sort of intimidation.

The question is basically like, algustopinoche?

Like, as the question, do you want more of this?

And then there's a yes box, which is a chili flag.

and a huge box and it says yes underneath and then a tiny little box like a blank box next to it that says no so it's almost as if you're being unpatriotic by taking notes it's like vote for the yes the algostop pinochet box this is chile this is what we want this is what we represent or

yeah you can you can put a little cross there if you want but that's not very patriotic that's not what's going to be best for chile

legitimate or not the new constitution coupled with the economic miracle brought about by the chicago boys represents a show of strength for Pinochet.

It appears that the chaos that led to the general's coup is in the past now.

His Chile projects stability.

Internationally, some of the heat surrounding Pinochet begins to cool.

Significantly, Britain, under the premiership of Margaret Thatcher, lifts its arms embargo on the regime.

This allows Chile to begin dealing weapons globally.

This isn't the last time Pinochet and Thatcher will scratch each other's backs.

When the Falklands War breaks out in 1982, Pinochet never publicly comes out in favor of the Brits, but his refusal to support his Latin American neighbor, Argentina, speaks volumes.

Thatcher certainly appreciates the general's position.

The conflict marks the start of a long personal friendship between the two leaders, one that will endure long after they both leave office.

But behind this outward image of authority, trouble is brewing for Pinochet.

The so-called economic miracle is failing the poorest in the country.

Political repression by Dino is turning Chile into a pressure cooker.

Unrest is growing.

Despite all his efforts to purge the country of socialism, a militant left wing is on the rise again.

The general now has a target on his head.

It's September the 7th, 1986.

The presidential motorcade sets off, heading towards the center of Santiago, with the general on board.

Other road users make way as the vehicle glides through the city streets.

Onlookers pause on the pavement to watch their leader pass.

As they make their way through the Locuro neighborhood, the motorcade suddenly slows.

The road before them is blocked by a civilian car.

Why isn't it moving?

And then, quite suddenly, a man steps into their path.

He positions something on his shoulder.

It's a rocket launcher, and it's aiming right at them.

The president's driver throws the car into reverse, wheels spinning.

A handbrake turn, and they're gone, just as the first vehicle in the motor kit is hit by a rocket-propelled grenade.

Thanks to the quick thinking of his driver, Pinochet survives the attempted hit unharmed.

Five of his officers are killed, eleven more are injured, and the general is furious.

The attempt on his life, known as Operation Dagger, is claimed by a leftist guerrilla organization.

They are called the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front, or FPMR,

named after a hero of the country's independence movement, and they are about to bear the full brunt of Pinochet's wrath.

A brutal crackdown ensues, targeting opposition groups.

There are more arrests, more horrific interrogations.

People, even vaguely linked to the FPMR, have disappeared.

But this won't be enough to halt the turning tide.

Operation Dagger is a pivotal moment.

Pinochet's grip on the country is beginning to loosen.

By 1987, the general is under mounting pressure to return Chile to civilian rule.

Even the Pope speaks out while on a tour of South America, branding the regime as dictatorial.

What was a key source of support for Pinochet, Nixon's administration is long gone.

President Reagan is now in the White House, and the new U.S.

ambassador in Chile, a man named Harry G.

Barnes Jr., is butting heads with Pinochet.

Ambassador Barnes has been sent to Chile with instructions to encourage, quote, the orderly restoration of democracy as speedily as possible.

But Pinochet isn't willing to relinquish power.

He's still convinced that he's backed by most of the country.

To ease the pressure, The general announces that he is willing to do things democratically.

If he's defeated at the polls, he'll step aside.

After years in the wilderness, opposition parties are legalized again.

In 1988, Pinochet holds his second referendum.

Do the Chilean people wish to stick with him?

Yes or no?

As he presents it, it's a clear choice.

Risk civilian rule again, or consent to another eight years of stable military stewardship.

Pinochet is confident, but he hasn't bargained on the opposition parties uniting under a far-reaching no campaign.

His opponents are savvy, using television adverts, billboards, and rallies to condemn the human rights abuses, Pinochet's extravagant lifestyle, and the country's economic inequalities.

With a common goal of ending the dictatorship, the No campaign has the support of foreign governments, human rights organizations, exiled Chilean activists, and the U.S.

ambassador.

On October the 5th, 1988, the No campaign triumphs by a significant margin.

It looks like Pinochet's time at the top is over.

But, unsurprisingly, the general has a backup plan.

He did not voluntarily step down from the October 1988 plebiscite.

He had told his own subordinates that, quote, I'm not leaving no matter what.

And he had put in place a Machiavellian plan to kill a lot of people, create chaos the night of the vote if he was losing, and use that chaos and violence that he himself was secretly going to orchestrate and order.

to annul the entire election and stay in power as dictator for life, which had always been his plan, going all the way back to the constitution that he pushed through in 1980.

But what the general doesn't know is that Ambassador Barnes has got wind of his scheme and has been working to ensure the result of the referendum is honored.

That plan that he had was thwarted by first the power of the public position against him, the power of the Chilean people voting against him, by the efforts of the United States government of all places, which had helped to orchestrate a coup in 1973 and now in 1988 was trying to thwart a second Pinochet coup.

The U.S.

ambassador in particular really did push other members of Pinochet's inner circle not to implement his plan.

And when he tried to implement it the night of the plebiscite, Every single one of his generals stood up and said, we won't help you.

We won't implement it.

We won't sign a decree for emergency powers for you.

You wanted this vote.

You made yourself the candidate.

You lost.

And now we're going to go back to civilian rule.

Once his kingmakers, America is now a key player in Pinochet's fall.

The general is left with no choice but to stand down.

In 1989, Chile holds its first democratic presidential elections in almost two decades.

Patricio Aylwin of the Christian Democratic Party wins the presidency.

Pinochet's rule is finally over.

But that's not the end of the story.

He may no longer be in power, but Pinochet has an exit strategy.

a way to ensure he never has to answer for his actions.

Article 9 of the the Chilean Constitution, the constitution he created, states that if a former president has served at least six years, he becomes a senator for life.

Chilean senators enjoy parliamentary immunity from prosecution.

Thus, Pinochet cannot be prosecuted for human rights abuses carried out under his regime.

The general settled into a comfortable retirement.

While his victims and the families of the disappeared begin a years-long legal battle to bring him to justice, Pinochet is still living the high life.

He has his own security detail which follows him everywhere he goes.

He still owns multiple properties both in Chile and abroad.

He travels frequently, for holidays and, as we know, for medical treatment.

In 1998, a decade after losing the referendum that removed him from power, Pinochet takes a trip to London.

He enjoys a few tourist attractions and catches up with his old friend, former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

He then checks himself in for back surgery at an exclusive clinic.

It's while he's convalescing in the private hospital in the West End that some unexpected guests arrive at his door.

The Metropolitan Police, with a warrant from a Spanish judge.

But the arrest is just the beginning of a prolonged legal battle, and General Pinochet knows his way around a rearguard action.

He's released from detention on medical grounds.

Instead of being extradited, as the Spanish warrant requires, he remains in the UK under house arrest.

The house in question is a comfortable property on a luxury estate in Surrey.

But he can't hide from the truth forever.

General Augusto Pinochet was arrested in London for being the vile dictator that he had been, for being the international terrorist that he had been.

His arrest was such a bolt of thunder for the human rights movement that the administration of William Clinton basically could not say no to the petitions of the families of Pinochet's victims from right-to-know advocacy groups like my own, the National Security Archive, to our petitions that the United States declassify all the evidence of Pinochet's human rights atrocities, so that evidence could be used in a court of law.

As newly declassified documents are made public, Pressure mounts to see the deposed dictator brought to justice.

But Pinochet still has friends in high places.

Thatcher speaks up publicly in his support.

He is old.

He must be allowed to go home.

She even sends him a bottle of expensive scotch.

Her accompanying note reads, Scotch is one British institution that will never let you down.

During his house arrest, Pinochet's image as an infirm, doddery elder statesman is solidified.

His medical team claim he no longer has the mental capacity to stand trial.

British Home Secretary Jack Straw agrees.

He declares that Pinochet, now in his mid-80s and showing signs of dementia, isn't fit to face trial in Spain.

Instead, Pinochet is allowed to return home to Chile.

The Chilean government lobbied vociferously, the British, to kind of orchestrate his return.

He feigned mental incapacitation and physical imitations.

He was only photographed in a wheelchair for months and months and months.

Everybody thought that he was paralyzed and couldn't walk from the supposed strokes that he had had.

Behold, when he got back to Chile, instead of being sent to Spain, he jumped right out of his wheelchair and walked across the tarmac from the plane.

So it was quite an orchestration.

But how long can he keep walking away from justice?

The immunity from prosecution which he granted himself two decades earlier may not be as watertight as he thinks.

Under Chilean law, they name a special prosecutor, a judge, because a special case,

he's got parliamentary immunity from prosecution.

If we're going to do the impossible and prosecuting, we first have to impeach him.

So they name Juan Guzman Tapia.

to be this person.

They pick Juan Guzman because he was conservative.

The Chilean government claimed they were going to prosecute him and that they wanted to see justice done, but I think we're caught by surprise when a bold and courageous judge actually indicted him within three days of his return.

But Judge Guzman, who I had the great honor and pleasure of knowing fairly well and seeing many times before his passing a couple of years ago, He faced this dilemma, which was that Pinochet's argument was that he had suffered these strokes.

He could not contribute to his own defense.

And this went back and forth and back and forth for a couple of years.

But then Pinochet made a strategic mistake.

He gave an interview to a rapidly right-wing Cuban-American television station in Miami, in which he basically said, I sleep like a baby.

If human rights atrocities were committed, they were committed by rogue subordinates without my knowledge, et cetera, et cetera.

And Judge Guzman did something very interesting in the pursuit of justice against Pinochet.

He brought in a team of therapists and psychologists and psychiatrists to watch this interview and dissect it.

And their professional report to the judge was, here was an individual who could think clearly enough to place the blame on his underlings and try and absolve himself.

of any culpability.

And that thought process was the process of somebody who could think rather clearly in trying to protect their own ass, basically.

These were the words of somebody who was not mentally incapacitated, but somebody who was rather mentally savvy in trying to place the blame elsewhere.

And based on this report, which drew a lot of attention in Chile, Judge Guzman determined that Pino Miche was not, in fact, mentally incapacitated, could contribute to his own defense, and could and should be indicted in Chile.

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Finally, it seems, Pinochet will stand trial.

But things don't quite work out that way.

It's Sunday, December the 3rd, 2006.

Night time, around 2 a.m.

We're in the Santiago Military Hospital.

And the staff are awaiting the arrival of a seriously ill patient.

Augusto Pinochet, who recently turned 91, has been living under house arrest for several years,

but a medical emergency has granted him special dispensation to come to the hospital.

He's had an acute heart attack.

The doors crash open and Pinochet is wheeled into the emergency ward.

Swiftly, the doctors perform an angioplasty.

a procedure to open a blocked artery and get blood flowing again to his heart.

It saves him, for now,

but his condition remains extremely serious.

A priest is sent for to read the General the Last Rites.

It's six years since he was first indicted, but Pinochet has still managed effectively to dodge punishment for his crimes.

He suffers from diabetes and arthritis.

He's had a series of strokes.

Repeatedly, his medical issues have been used to slow the legal process.

But while he's avoided prison, he's not been immune to shifting public perceptions.

The name Augusto Pinochet had become synonymous with gross violations of human rights.

He was hounded in the last several years of his life by the legal system.

And as he aged, it became clear that he felt even the need to try and explain his abuses and his historical position to try and justify how it was that he was going to be remembered as a pariah rather than as a savior.

And you can see in these final letters that he writes that were released by the Pinochet Foundation, and in fact, even the creation of the foundation to try and buffer in some way possible, you know, his image, his kind of desperate need to justify, qualify, and in some ways apologize indirectly for things that had happened during his dictatorship.

A week after his heart attack, Pinochet lies in his hospital bed, surrounded by family members.

Outside the hospital, a crowd of his supporters stand and chant.

They wave placards expressing love for their former leader.

They bellow out his name.

They say he will live forever.

They even mock those trying trying to bring him to justice.

You never got him, they cry.

They don't say he was innocent, though.

With loved ones by his side, Augusto Pinochet dies in Santiago Military Hospital on December the 10th, 2006.

It just so happens to be International Human Rights Day.

The general's body is taken away for cremation.

Apparently, he didn't want a grave that could be desecrated.

Today, long after his death, Pinochet's legacy continues to be contested.

Chilean society remains deeply divided.

Some still see him as a patriotic hero who took a stand in the Cold War.

But to many others, He was a cruel, untethered despot, responsible for a litany of crimes.

The true history, known to his victims, known to the majority of Chileans, recorded in secret documents that are still coming out today, is of a very evil dictator who ran a very evil military dictatorship.

And Pinochet will always be remembered for the dictator, human rights violator.

international terrorist and corrupt thief that he was.

People who want to whitewash that will continue to try, but the historical record will always be there.

The declassified documents are so powerful.

The historical record on General Augusto Pinochet is crystal clear.

Under Pinochet's rule, tens of thousands of Chileans were tortured, executed or disappeared.

That's according to two government truth commissions set up after Chile returned to democracy.

Furthermore, it's been revealed that Pinochet, his wife Lucille, and their family embezzled millions of dollars from the public coffers.

Those ill-gotten gains, it turns out, funded their extravagant lifestyle.

Many of Pinochet's conspirators continue to elude justice.

Worse, hundreds upon hundreds of families of the disappeared still have no clarity about what happened to their family members or even their remains.

The fate of thousands of citizens is still a mystery.

For me, disappearance is the core of Pinochet.

I can talk all about the regime and everything like this and national security states, neoliberalism and U.S.

foreign policy.

But to me, the whole story is that.

You want the essence of Pinochetism?

The disappearance

for two decades two of the women i spoke to were going out into the desert every day just searching these barren plains and they never found anything you know that occasionally you'd find a bone and it would turn out to be an animal bone or a fragment of clothing and they just leave a pile of stones in the desert to kind of mark the extent of their search and then turn back empty-handed every evening They've only ever found 307 of the forcibly disappeared people since the return to democracy or any kind of trace of them, any kind of a body or a fragment or anything.

So, for the rest of these families, you know, they have no idea what happened.

No idea at all.

You wake up every morning and they're still not there.

There's still no evidence of them, there's still no trace.

It makes you a victim over and over again, I think.

Real dictators will be back soon.

Next time we'll cross the border from Chile into Argentina.

We'll explore the story of a gaunt, hawkish man who earned the nickname the Hitler of the Pampa.

A man whose awkward bearing and discomfort in the limelight belied his astonishing capacity for cruelty.

A dictator who literally stole the children of his prisoners.

and sought to use sport and spectacle to mask his atrocities.

The story of Jorge Rafael Videla.

That's next time.