Posted on 12/06/2006 12:13:22 PM PST by Chi-townChief
Fighting serious illnesses in their old age, Cold War icons Fidel Castro of Cuba and Augusto Pinochet of Chile are united in stubborn adherence to their opposing and now largely unfashionable ideologies.
In Havana 80-year-old Castro, leader of Cuba for more than four decades, handed power to his brother on July 31 after an operation and has not reappeared in public. Despite official denials, many Cubans believe he is terminally ill.
Pinochet, 91, military leader of Chile from 1973 to 1990 and now pursued by courts for human rights and financial crimes, was recovering after a heart attack nearly killed him on Sunday.
Their Cold War battles shaped an era and they forged global reputations. Castro took power in 1959 in a revolution that overthrew U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista.
Castro's Chilean ally, socialist Salvador Allende, was toppled by Pinochet's U.S.-backed 1973 coup.
Both have been called despots by their critics but Castro's passionate supporters admire him for standing up to U.S. imperialism while Pinochet fans say he saved Chile from Marxism.
"They have a lot of similarities. They aren't democratic, they ruled for a long time, they both radically transformed their countries, and they had influence well beyond their own countries," said Chilean political scientist Patricio Navia.
"Their legacies will be around for a long time, but both countries will be much better off after they are gone," he said.
The contrast between the two leaders was noted on the streets of Santiago.
"We were in a bad way when Pinochet took over the country. If he had not acted the way he did we would have been another Cuba," said retired construction site foreman Hernan Diaz.
Diaz said his family suffered under Allende, who killed himself during the coup with a submachine gun that was a gift from Castro.
In Havana, even critics of communist rule recognize Castro put Cuba on the world stage.
"Whatever you say about Fidel's absolute control over Cuban society and his economic mistakes, he left his mark on the 20th century with his brilliant political skills," said dissident Oscar Espinosa Chepe.
RETRENCHING COMMUNISM, JUSTIFYING ABUSE
Rather than softening in his old age, Castro retrenched orthodox communism in his last years and has had a revival of international support recently as the Latin American left resurges.
Pinochet has accepted political -- if not criminal -- responsibility for abuses during his regime, but he says everything was justified "to make Chile a great place and prevent its disintegration."
The two had a mutual, but distinct, penchant for uniforms. Castro favored drab, olive-green fatigues while Pinochet's ornate dress garb was replete with gold braid and scarlet trim.
Both leaders built police states. Dozens of Pinochet's agents were convicted of assassination and torture and Castro's government has not hesitated to jail dissidents. But there are no credible reports of disappearances, extrajudicial killings and torture in Cuba since the early 1960s, according to human rights groups.
The two met when Castro visited Allende in Chile in 1971 and Pinochet was commander of the Santiago garrison.
"He had a lot of charisma with civilians because he's pretty macho, attentive with the ladies. But I didn't like him much," Pinochet told an interviewer in the 1990s.
Even Pinochet detractors recognize that his free market reforms laid a groundwork that the center-left adapted to turn Chile into a model of economic stability. And even many Castro supporters accept that Cuba's uniquely consumerism-free economy has become a basket case since Soviet Communism collapsed.
Though Cuba's model is not being copied in other countries, new left-wing populist presidents such as Bolivia's Evo Morales and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez look to Castro for inspiration.
"One day, there will be many Cubas and many Fidels in Latin America," Morales said last week on a trip to Havana to pay homage to the ailing Castro.
Comparing Castro and Pinochet is like comparing Hitler and Churchill.
Unfashionable in Cuba, maybe, but here in the America there are millions of idiots who would love to turn the US into the
worker's paradise that exists under Pinochet and Castro.
How many free elections have Cubans enjoyed for fifty years?
Pinochet saved Chile and made life much better for the Chilean people. Castro did the exact opposite in Cuba.
I have seen reports that suggested that Castro feared and hated Allende, more than he hated Pinochet for stopping Allende in his leftist tracks. Allende represented a threat, in that Allende wanted to use the democratic process to usher in the Chilean version of Castro's tropical gulag. If it is true, one has to wonder what Castro really thought of Chavez, and his "Bolivarian democratic revolution."
Many don't know the true story of the Allende government and where it was all headed - and very quickly.
The Socialist experiment was spiraling rapidly out of control and headed towards disaster. Allende was resorting to increasingly desperate measures as Chile went from a food exporter to an importer (after seizing many estates), and the Commies had stolen much industry from the wealthy. Capital was fleeing the country as were the monied and entrepreneurial classes.
Allende was preparing to call martial law and was unloading Soviet weapons in Valparaiso harbor.
Pinochet could not bear to watch the further disintegration of his country. As a staunch anti-Communist, he would not allow its seizure by a Soviet armed Allende. The people were demonstrating in the streets. There was open talk of revolution. Someone had to DO SOMETHING!
Pinochet had cojones. He acted. He is reviled for it to this day - hysterically so by the international left.
Many clueless leftist diptards even some people on this forum equate him with Socialist killers such as Mao (+30million killed), Stalin (25million murdered) and Hitler (12 million murdered).
Pinochet was a soldier, and responded to a violent movement (Communism) - which started at the ballot box but quickly descended to fighting in the streets as people began to feel the effects of their folly - the same place it always ends up.
The Rettig Commission established a list of the victims and could only come up with some 2095 names. Everyone pretty much agrees on this figure - except, of course - some of the hysterical left.
This was a small price to pay for the liberation of Chile from communist thugs.
We killed over a million in Vietnam and couldn't stop Communism. Nobody is calling JFK a Hitler or Stalin.
Over a million died in Korea - and we didn't give the commies the boot.
Pinochet sends 2000 violent leftist diptards, Commie thugs, and foreign Communist agitators and troublemakers to the boneyard and people are calling him a Hitler. Puhleeeease!
Even though Bruening would have prevented the wholesale slaughter of millions by fanatical ideologues by imprisoning and executing those fanatics before they did the harm.
BTW, I wish I had a T-shirt with that photo of Pinochet on it, Che-style.
The lefties hated Pinochet infinitely more than any Arab tyrant.
CALGARYSUN.COM
Tue, May 11, 2004
Augusto Pinochet rescued Chile from sins of Marxist dictator
By Paul Jackson -- Calgary Sun
Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher regarded General Augusto Pinochet as a great man of heroic stature who halted the total enslavement of the people of Chile under a brutal Communist regime.
Now, any individual Thatcher admires surely deserves the admiration of others who believe modern-day Stalinists shouldn't be allowed to trample on people's rights and freedoms.
Yet Premier Ralph Klein has got himself in some hot water by suggesting there was something positive in Pinochet cleaning up the chaos left by Marxist Salvador Allende after the reckless and ruthless leader had been in power just three years.
Klein was right and anyone who has read the carefully-assessed and critically acclaimed works Allende: Death of a Marxist Dream and Out of the Ashes: Life, Death and the Transformation of Democracy in Chile 1883-1988 by famed historian James R. Whelan (Winner of the prestigious
Nieman Fellowship at Harvard) will attest to that.
My only surprise at Klein's comments was that, after making his initial assessment of Pinochet, he then tempered his stance somewhat by suggesting Pinochet committed no worse sins than Allende. Actually, Pinochet
committed no sins, but simply rescued his countrymen from the sins of Allende, and deserves the praise of every Chilean for his courage and accomplishments.
President Richard Nixon himself saw the havoc Allende would wreak on Chile and authorized the funding of attempts to prevent him from coming to power in 1970 and backed Pinochet's coup d'etat against the Marxist
politician in 1973. Nixon has been much maligned by his enemies in the lib-left, but he beat them at their game by dying with the reputation of a honourable statesman.
During the three years Allende was in power, he ruined his nation's economy with massive state takeovers of huge sectors of industry and confiscated the assets of U.S. companies in that nation. Shortages of basic commodities were commonplace, and massive strikes erupted in protest.
Within the same period of time Pinochet, with the help of world renowned economists such as the University of Chicago's Milton Friedman, turned the nation's economy around so dramatically observers dubbed it the "Miracle
of Chile."
Allende had pledged to follow the disastrous economic, political and social policies of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro -- who turned his nation into an impoverished slave state -- and Pinochet, a true patriot, felt he
had to act for his own people's sake. He wanted, he proclaimed, "to make Chile not a nation of proletarians, but a nation of entrepreneurs."
That, as evidenced by Chile's revival, he certainly did. Naturally, there's nothing the lib-left and their Stalinist allies like better than to distort history and demean the achievements of their opponents.
The campaign against Pinochet never ceases, but never succeeds either.
Revisionist history tells us Pinochet was a dictator, but he was the first dictator to hold a democratic plebiscite and oust himself out of power.
He did that in 1988, when he felt the woes and corruption left by Allende were finally gone.
Following that plebiscite, in which he still won more votes than Allende had in 1970, Pinochet accepted defeat, staying in power only until 1990 when his term legally expired. After that, he was appointed Commander-in-Chief of Chile's armed forces, and later a senator. Hardly
actions that showed he was hated by the new democratic government of Chile or the Chilean people.
In 1998, while on a visit to Britain, a renegade judge in Spain used an obscure law to order his extradition to Spain to face charges of rights abuses. The free government of Chile itself opposed this bogus move.
Indeed, even Prime Minister Tony Blair's (socialist, at that) government refused to extradite the retired right-wing politician to face a sham showcase trial. Again, hardly a condemnation of Pinochet.
Pinochet returned to Chile and, in 2002, the Supreme Court of his country refused to prosecute Pinochet on any number of phoney charges.
Assess the actions of Allende and of Pinochet and the scales of justice and truth are weighted heavily in favour of Pinochet. The rewriting of history by unrepentant supporters of Allende and continuing attempts to impose the discredited theories of Marxism on society simply must be countered.
CASTRO Y PINOCHET
James R. Whelan
Martes, 9 de mayo de 2000
Cuando Fidel Castro hizo su entrada triunfal en La Habana, el 8 de enero de 1959, Cuba era uno de los países más prósperos del mundo. Cuando Augusto Pinochet y sus colegas militares depusieron al marxista-leninista Salvador Allende, el 11 de septiembre de 1973, encontraron un país al borde del colapso económico. Lo que desde entonces ha sucedido en ambos países es imposible tapar con el dedo.
Castro gobierna una nación donde prácticamente todo está racionado, un país que Freedom House clasifica como "estado policial de un solo partido" y “sin libertad” por 40 años, caso único en nuestro hemisferio.
Por el contrario, Chile figura entre los países "libres" según Freedom House, desde que Pinochet, derrotado en un plebiscito entregó voluntariamente el poder. Pero Castro es adulado y tratado con respeto por dirigentes políticos y periodistas en todas partes del mundo. El más vergonzoso y reciente ejemplo lo dio Janet Reno, Procuradora General de Estados Unidos, postrándose ante Fidel Castro en el caso del niño Elián González.
En cambio, Pinochet es perseguido y vilipendiado por una amplia gama de observadores y analistas. La misma Janet Reno aportó los formidables recursos de su Departamento de Justicia al flagelo "legal" de Pinochet.
El contraste del muy distinto trato recibido por estos dos líderes latinoamericanos parece provenir de las páginas del libro de George Orwell, "1984", donde encontramos términos como "nuevohablar" (blanco es negro, arriba es abajo) y "doblepensar" (creer en dos ideas contradictorias a la vez). Se trata, ni más ni menos, del triunfo orwelliano de la propaganda política impulsada por la izquierda internacional y del conveniente olvido de los hechos por quienes tienen la obligación de reportarlos.
Poco antes de irrumpir Castro en el poder, el ingreso per capita de los cubanos se aproximaba al de los italianos. Cuba figuraba en el lugar 22 entre las –entonces- 122 naciones del mundo en términos de desarrollo. Más de 12 mil italianos esperaban visas para emigrar a esa isla de oportunidades. Y los indicadores sociales avanzaban paralelamente: el alfabetismo se ubicaba en 80 por ciento, una cifra bastante alta para aquellos tiempos.
Cuba tenía más médicos y dentistas per capita que Holanda, Francia, el Reino Unido y Finlandia. Los cubanos gozaban de las tasas más bajas de mortalidad infantil y las más altas de longevidad de los países latinoamericanos. En 1959, los cubanos tenían ingresos similares a los puertorriqueños, mientras que hoy ganan menos de una décima parte.
Durante años, Castro pudo esconder su incompetencia detrás de las asombrosas subvenciones soviéticas. La historiadora rusa Irina Zorina calcula que la URSS le regaló a Castro cien mil millones de dólares, es decir, cuatro veces el total del Plan Marshall, y tres veces la ayuda recibida por toda la América Latina bajo la Alianza para el Progreso.
Cuando Rusia suspendió su ayuda económica en 1992, la economía cubana se contrajo violentamente, perdiendo 50% de su capacidad productiva y 80% de sus industrias se vieron obligadas a cerrar.
La mejor prueba del inmenso fracaso de Castro es que en ningún consulado cubano alrededor del mundo hay gente haciendo cola para emigrar a Cuba. Por el contrario, más de 1,5 millones de cubanos han huido de la isla, la mayoría de ellos arriesgando sus vidas y abandonando lo que tenían.
El caso Pinochet difícilmente podría ser más diferente. El ex presidente chileno, Eduardo Frei Montalva, sintetizó la situación del país en vísperas de la Revolución de 1973: "Chile está hundido en un desastre economico, no una crisis, sino una verdadera catástrofe... peor que la inflacion, la escasez, la violencia es el odio. Hay angustia en Chile..."
El mismo Allende, a pocos días de su caída, anunció que quedaba pan sólo para cuatro días. La inflación galopaba fuera de control, acercándose a mil por ciento. Un país, antes orgulloso, se había degenerado en un verdadero infierno socialista.
A partir de 1973, el régimen militar chileno tuvo que enfrentar boicots, embargos y hostilidad generalizada, no sólo de parte de países comunistas sino de los supuestamente anticomunistas, encabezados por Estados Unidos.
El gobierno de Pinochet transformó lo que era la segunda economía más estatista de América Latina (después de Cuba) en la más libre y próspera. Sin embargo, en la prensa mundial Pinochet aparece como el villano y a Castro siempre se le da el beneficio de la duda. ¿Dónde está el George Orwell de nuestra generación capaz de desenmascarar tanta hipocresía?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.