Augusto Pinochet Documentary Sparks Protests Over Chilean Dictator's Legacy
Augusto Pinochet Documentary Sparks Protests Over Chilean Dictator's Legacy
By LUIS ANDRES HENAO 06/10/12 02:06 PM ET
SANTIAGO, Chile — The poster makes its plea from one of the pock-marked walls once splattered with blood at Londres 38, a former detention and torture center where 96 people were killed or disappeared during Chile's long dictatorship. It reads: "Pinochet, may your legacy die."
Yet that legacy is far from dead. Gen. Augusto Pinochet's loyalists on Sunday held their biggest gathering since his death in 2006, and it has ignited a national debate about the limits of freedom of speech as groups on the other side sought to block the event and then staged protests to try to disrupt it.
Police used tear gas and water cannons to try to disperse hundreds of anti-Pinochet demonstrators protesting the premiere of a documentary about the run-up to his dictatorship years. The film casts him as a national hero who saved Chile from communism and who died victimized by vengeful leftists who accused him of embezzlement and human rights crimes.
Inside the theater, thousands of the former strongman's backers, known as "Pinochetistas" waved Chilean flags and held up photos of Pinochet. When his grandson, retired Captain Augusto Pinochet Molina, took the stage, they gave him a long standing ovation.
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Augusto Pinochet Hiriart, Pinochet son, and School of the America's graduate
Augusto Pinochet Molina, Pinochet grandson
The widow of Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, Lucia Hiriart (R), attends a
commemorative mass as her granddaughter yawns at the military church in Santiago
December 10, 2007. December 10 marks the first anniversary of the Pinochet's death
after suffering a heart attack at the military hospital in Santiago. Pinochet ruled
Chile from 1973-1990 and spent his old age fighting human rights, fraud and
corruption charges. REUTERS/Ivan Alvarado (CHILE)
Lucia Pinochet Hiriart, Pinochet daughter[/center]
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