Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Great times in Chile:
- In the weeks after the military seized power in a coup Sept. 11, 1973, thousands of Chileans sympathetic to the socialist government were detained. Many were tortured, and several hundred were tried and executed by military war tribunals.
A woman described the corpse of her son, the manager of a state cement plant, who turned himself in after the coup and died in custody five weeks later: "He was missing one eye, his nose was torn off, one ear was separated and hanging, there were marks of deep burns on his neck and face, his mouth was very swollen."
In the next stage, the army's secret police squads waged a "systematic campaign to exterminate" leftist dissidents from 1974 to 1977, the report states. Inside clandestine prisons, people were tortured with electric shocks, choking, confinement and even animal rape. There were 957 victims who never reappeared and are presumed dead.
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That's just the tip of the greatness.
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That still does not change the fact that Chile now has the strongest economy in Latin America, and has the highest standard of living (maybe number 2) in South America. When the coup occured, Chile was close to the bottom, its standard of living was declining rapidly, there was massive inflation, and incredible capital flight from the country. Pinochet may have been a nasty dude, but the country has kept his economic policies in place making Chile the economic miracle of Latin America.
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