| 摘要 | It seems like only yesterday that Chile and Argentina were less countries than causes, at least for the more liberal elements of the international community. And no wonder: both places were the site of horrific internal wars, which produced massive human rights violations, including not merely the jailing of political opponents but torture and disappearances–most of the last still not fully accounted for. By now, a rich printed and cinematic literature on the subject luxuriates in gruesome details (books such as Bernardo Verbitsky’s The Flight and films such as Missing and The Official Story).
Because Americans and Europeans do not follow events in these countries on a day-to-day basis, their information tends to be radically out of date. The dark images of the 1970s continue to dominate the collective imagination of the Northern Hemisphere, even though the realities on the ground have drastically shifted. Concretely, since 1983, Argentina has had a succession of elected civilian governments, and the same applies to Chile since 1989. Neither has completely liquidated the tragic legacies of the recent past, but both have made immense progress toward reestablishing democracy and the rule of law.
Is the glass half empty or half full? The question is as much philosophical as evidential. Thanks to a drastic dismantling of a huge and unproductive public sector, as well as unprecedented incentives for foreign capital, Chile’s macroeconomic performance has outstripped that of its South American neighbors for more than a decade. And thanks to a drastic reform of its pension system, workers now have savings accounts far in excess of anything they could otherwise have accumulated.
Conversely, inequalities of income are greater than ever. At the same time, under a constitution drafted under military tutelage, the armed forces retain a residual power unlike anything seen elsewhere in Latin America, including Ecuador and El Salvador, which have a longer history of direct military rule. The recent detention of former dictator General Augusto Pinochet in London as the result of actions by British and Spanish courts is putting Chilean civil-military relations to their sternest test since 1989.
As for Argentina, here too are always grounds for both optimism and pessimism. A huge country–one-third the size of the continental United States–Argentina is immensely wealthy in both natural resources and human capital. Argentines can boast of two Nobel laureates (both in the natural sciences), a world-class opera company, a rich literature, a lively and independent press, and a capital (Buenos Aires) that ranks as one of the most attractive, sophisticated, and interesting cities in the world. Moreover, since 1983, the Argentine armed forces have been cut down to size, first by President Raúl Alfonsín, who put the commanders of the former ruling junta (1976–1983) on trial, and then by President Carlos Menem, who successfully faced down a barracks revolt, abolished conscription, drastically cut the military budget, and has even teased an apology for the “dirty war” out of two of his service chiefs.
Under Menem, Argentina has had its own version of Pinochet’s economic reforms–not merely privatization of the telephones, the electrical system, and the state oil company but a drastic fiscal discipline, which has brought inflation to heel. The Argentina peso now trades at roughly the same rate as the U.S. dollar, and there is even talk of moving to the dollar as the official unit of Argentine currency.[1]
But the social costs of these reforms have not been small. Argentina’s large and affluent middle class has always been in thrall to government employment, direct or indirect. Hence, privatization has led to a rise in unemployment–to record levels for recent history. Moreover, to bring fiscal deficits under control, Menem has drastically cut government expenditures in many areas, including health and education–this at a time when his opponents are constantly accusing him of lining his own pockets (and those of his associates) through bribes and sweetheart deals with shady businessmen. Although the human rights issue is no a longer politically salient for most Argentines–if, indeed, it ever was–recent information concerning babies of political prisoners purloined and put out for adoption has embarrassed leaders of the armed forces, including the current army chief of staff.
The Approaching Election in Chile
Chile and Argentina are moving once again toward presidential elections, which have traditionally been defining moments in their political history. In Chile, the electoral calendar puts several important issues on the table. The first is the future of the governing Christian Democratic-Socialist coalition (the so-called Concordancia), which will select its presidential candidate in primaries at the end of this month. This is a first for Chile; in the past, parties chose their presidential candidates in caucuses or conventions, or (since 1989) through consultation among their leaders. Not surprisingly, perhaps, the first two elected presidents since the military left power have been Christian Democrats, and fairly conservative ones at that, because civil-military relations were expected to be fairly fragile after nearly two decades of dictatorship. The prospect of an open primary, however, no longer ensures that the next government will resemble the last two–that is, be a centrist coalition tilted slightly to the right. The most popular candidate–all the polls confirm the fact–is not Christian Democratic Senator Andrés Zaldívar but Socialist Ricardo Lagos.
An economist trained in the United States (Ph.D., Duke University), Lagos could hardly be described as a radical, although he was politically active in the Marxist-populist government of Salvador Allende (1970–1973); he was slated to be Allende’s ambassador to the Soviet Union just prior to the coup. Much water has passed under the bridge since then, and much rethinking too, on the part not just of Lagos but of other Chilean socialists. If proof of his present moderation is needed, there is the record of his recent performance (1994–1998) as minister of public works: his vigorous privatization of many state-owned facilities, his determined outreach to the financial and business communities in Chile and elsewhere, and his prudent rhetoric.
Nonetheless, Lagos’s opponents–both within the Concordancia and in Chilean society at large–regard him as a potentially polarizing candidate. Zaldívar himself professes to believe–not completely disinterestedly, but not wholly without foundation–that he, Zaldívar, would do better in a general election. For their part, the forces of the Chilean Right, most notably the Independent Democratic Union (UDI), are delighted at the prospect of a Lagos candidacy, which they believe would bolster the chances of their candidate, Joaquin Lavín, mayor of the affluent Las Condes suburb of Santiago and a Chicago-trained economist with a brilliant record in private business.
A Lagos candidacy, and even more a Lagos presidency, would undoubtedly be regarded with disfavor by some elements of the Chilean armed forces, who have looked on Chile’s experiment in democracy these past ten years with skepticism. No one believes that the country is likely to experience a military coup, now or in the future, but the exact lines of civil-military authority have been fluctuating over the past decade. The authoritarian constitution of 1980 has already been amended twice, and presumably Lagos would wish to amend it once again–particularly to eliminate appointed senators, who, thanks to figures named by President Pinochet before his retirement, give the forces of the Right an artificially strong hand in the upper house.
To talk about civil-military relations in Chile is to force some discussion of the recent detention of retired general Augusto Pinochet while on a personal visit to the United Kingdom. This curious situation results from actions taken by a Spanish judge in response to petitions by the families of Spanish citizens tortured in Chile during the Pinochet dictatorship. Thanks to the evolving jurisprudence of the European Union, Spain now feels itself in a position to demand Pinochet’s extradition, a point of view apparently shared–after many procedural S-curves–by the Labour government in Britain. The general’s case is now under appeal; meanwhile, he is virtually under house arrest in a bosky London suburb.
Since Pinochet’s arrest, the Chilean government has sturdily maintained that, as a senator for life (like all ex-presidents) and as the holder of a Chilean diplomatic passport, the general cannot possibly be subject to any European (or foreign) court. Despite its energetic protests, that government has found itself helpless to retrieve the general, even though many of those most active in working for his unhindered return–most notably, foreign minister José Miguel Insulza–suffered persecution and exile during the military regime.
The Chilean military is understandably angry and resentful at the detention of its former generalissimo–angry at Great Britain, at Spain, even at France, where a similar legal action against Pinochet is in process[2]–but, somewhat surprisingly, angriest most at its own government, as if President Eduardo Frei could wave a magic wand and make his country bigger, richer, and more powerful on the world scene than, in fact, it is. (This attitude may also reflect the shock and trauma produced by the discovery on the part of many Chilean officers that, when push comes to shove, their country cannot after all bomb London and cannot invade the Spanish peninsula.)
General Pinochet was detained in early October of last year. For the next thirty to sixty days, Chile was almost literally torn apart by demonstrations both in support of–and in opposition to–the pretensions of Spanish justice. By now, however, three things are obvious. First, General Pinochet is not returning to Chile any time soon; as he himself has sagely observed, perhaps he will return only in a pine box. (This may indeed be the ultimate purpose of both the British and the Spanish governments.) Next, however unhappy the military may be with the Frei government, it is not about to overthrow it.[3]
Finally, Chileans of all political tendencies are getting used to the general’s absence and perhaps, in the end, do not relish his return, which would cause more problems than it would resolve. Even the parties of the Chilean Right, which have been most vocal in his defense, must think about the future and cannot expend vast amounts of political capital on what is, after all, apparently a losing cause. Chile may therefore be moving, willy-nilly, into the post-Pinochet era, with the ex-dictator’s indefinite detention in England serving the same functional purpose for advancing the democratic transition as might be produced by his actual physical demise (à la Generalissimo Franco).
Political Succession in Argentina
Argentina’s political drama is of an entirely different order. There the issue is fully and plainly one of political succession. Despite repeated feints and gestures, President Carlos Menem appears to have accepted the fact that under the new 1994 constitution he cannot run for a third consecutive term. He has delayed the matter–and kept the possibility alive in the public imagination–for so long, however, that his putative successor, Buenos Aires Province Governor Eduardo Duhalde, has not been able to consolidate his own support in the Peronist party. Some believe, in fact, that President Menem would prefer to see Governor Duhalde lose the election, so that Menem could act as the leader of the opposition during the next presidency and become the Peronist candidate in 2003 (when he will be eligible to run for a third term).
The squabbles within Peronism do not necessarily mean an automatic victory for the opposition Radical-FREPASO coalition, whose candidate is Buenos Aires Mayor Fernando de la Rua. Although de la Rua is an attractive, articulate, and well-considered politician, the underlying tensions between his Radical Party (the traditional expression of Argentina’s middle class) and FREPASO, a coalition of Left-leaning parties and groups, periodically surface to pose doubts as to whether such a coalition could actually govern if elected. The pendulum of public opinion has swung back and forth in recent weeks and is likely to do so well up to election day on November 29. Most veteran Argentina-watchers predict a close election; some think that it will be very close indeed.
In that eventuality, Argentina might well go to a second round. Under the country’s complicated system of ballotage, to win, a candidate must secure either a clear numerical majority or at least 40 percent of the popular vote with at least a ten percentage point advantage over the nearest rival. Although Peronism and the Radical-FREPASO alliance both command large chunks of the Argentine electorate, there are enough small parties around to deprive either of the 50-plus-1 percent of the vote, and perhaps even the 40 percent/10 percent threshold of victory.
Under those circumstances, the kingmaker might well be former finance minister Domingo Cavallo, the creator of Argentina’s famed “convertibility plan” (which put the peso on par with the dollar and eliminated the scourge of inflation). Although Cavallo is not hugely popular, he does command intense support on the part of a small but significant segment of the electorate, and his Action for the Republic (which represents 7 percent of the vote, according to the most recent electoral test) may hold the key to victory. Cavallo is known to favor Governor Duhalde’s candidacy. Even if the latter cannot build sufficiently on Peronism’s known electoral “floor” of 35 percent, Duhalde may still win in the second round.
Such a victory would carry its price, to be sure. Cavallo would exact concessions in economic policy, which would probably make Duhalde’s administration somewhat more orthodox than the governor’s rhetoric has sometimes led one to anticipate. (Duhalde likes to project the image of a “traditional” Peronist–one concerned more with social justice and solidarity and less with the bottom line.) Of course, the same eventuality might well be expected of de la Rua; two of his closest economic advisers, Adalberto Rodríguez Giavirini and Ricardo López Murphy, are, if anything, even more orthodox than Cavallo.
The prospect of two different choices, both essentially similar in economic policy, points to a fact about this election that makes it different from almost any other in recent Argentine history. Since the introduction of universal manhood suffrage in 1912 (1949 for women), Argentine politics has been about fundamental choices, particularly in the elections of 1946, 1951, 1958, 1973, 1983, and 1989. Convinced that the outcome would decisively determine their future, people went to the polls and tied their hopes for a dramatic improvement in their personal condition to the victory of a particular candidate.
For the first time in memory, this is no longer the case. Argentines–except for the most addicted political partisans–know that, regardless of who wins the next election, the country has little option but to continue on the path on which President Menem has set it. Today there is a widespread awareness of both Argentina’s vulnerability to international financial markets and its limited space for maneuver in foreign policy. In effect, people know that there can be no reversal of Menem’s fundamental legacy–no renationalization of industries, no boom-and-spend populism, no inflationary monetary policy, no dramatic gestures on behalf of the poor or disenfranchised.
Perhaps for that reason, there is a vague mood of alienation and depression in the country, as if democracy as usual, with its unglamorous aspects and its unheroic demands on daily life, is something that the country needs some time to get used to. Given Argentina’s troubled recent past, however, this is not the worst of all possible worlds.
Notes
1. See “Dollarization for Argentina? For Latin America?” Latin American Outlook, April 1999.
2. Ironically, the United States may turn out to be an indirect beneficiary of this fresh grudge, since Chile’s Mirage jets were due for replacement, and the U.S. aerospace industry has been actively working to sell its own F-16s. Until Pinochet’s arrest, however, France was thought to hold the advantage inasmuch as the Chilean military were still angry at the United States for the arms embargo imposed by the U.S. Congress in 1976. (Indeed, this embargo originally led the Chileans–for the first time–to start shopping in Europe for their high-tech acquisitions.)
3. The generals have had to content themselves with symbolic gestures that have moderate (but not enormous) significance for civil-military relations. A most recent example (New York Times, April 27, 1999) was a personal visit paid to Pinochet in London by the army commander-in-chief without so much as asking a by-your-leave from his president.
Mark Falcoff is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. |
