COMMUNIST PARTY MEETS WITH MILITARY

(Oct. 11, 2005) Leaders from Chile’s Communist Coalition Party, Juntos Podemos Más, met with Commander in Chief Juan Emilio Cheyre last Thursday for the first time in thirty-two years. The reunion between the leaders is a major step forward for Chile’s reconciliation process.

The meeting is a testament to how far the country has come since former dictator Gen. Augusto Pinochet stepped down as commander of Chile’s armed forces in 1998. During the years of his military dictatorship, the communist party was branded an “internal enemy” and many of its members were tortured, killed, or exiled for their political beliefs.

Juntos Podemos Más is a political coalition between the legally constituted Communist Party (PC), the Humanist Party (PH) and other social and political organizations of the left.

Tomás Hirsch, the presidential candidate for the group, along with Guillermo Teiller, head of the PC, and Efrén Osorio, head of the PH, met in Gen. Cheyre’s office at the armed forces headquarters in Santiago to begin the process of reconciling decades of animosity between their respective organizations.

The coalition presented a text to Cheyre that outlined what their group feels are the principle responsibilities of Chile’s military in the now democratic society.

“The Armed Forces should defend the territorial, maritime, and aerial integrity and be inspired by the (Simon) Bolivarian dream to create a united Latin American state.” The text also called on the military to “protect Chile from threats against its sovereignty and national security, coming principally from the United States and their imperialist intentions to subdue third world countries.”

Gen. Cheyre responded cordially that he would read the document with interest and expressed a desire to meet with the leaders in the future. He also designated Gen. Juan Miguel Fuente-Alba, chief of the Center for Military Investigations and Studies, to take charge of facilitating further contact between the extra-parliamentary political groups of the left and the Armed Forces.

Guillermo Teiller said that there were moments of closeness as well as moments of tension, such as when the subject to the military coup and human rights abuses were brought up. Teiller himself spent two years in a military prison after Gen Pinochet’s coup ousted former President Salvador Allende in 1973. In 1982 he was appointed the communist party’s military liaison to the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front (FPMR), the group responsible for the 1986 attempt on Gen. Pinochet’s life.

Gen. Cheyre has been very conscious of the military’s role in human rights abuses that took place under the military dictatorship of Gen. Pinochet. He formally apologized to the nation on Sept. 11, 2003, the 30 year anniversary of the military coup, for crimes committed by the institution during the authoritarian years of the regime.
Military officials described the meeting as Gen. Cheyre’s attempt to close the circle of gestures he has made to the human rights community during his tenure as commander in chief. Cheyre is due to step down from the post in five months.