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Freedom Collection

Interviews with Genaro Arriagada

Interviewed December 27, 2024

The Chilean transition happened during a period in which the ex-dictator promulgated a constitution that could not be changed, in which he was designated as the commander in chief of the army for eight years, even though he was no longer president.

So we had elected the [new] president of the republic but he [Pinochet] was the commander in chief. This seems strange, but it is relatively normal during transitions. Consider Poland, where the hierarchy of the army was maintained, in spite of the predominance of Solidarity [the Polish Trade Union], of Lech Walesa, of [Bronislaw] Geremek, of so many…

[Lech Walesa (1943 – ) was the leader of Poland’s Solidarity movement that brought down the communist regime. He served as President of Poland from 1990 to 1995.]

[Bronislaw Geremek (1932 – 2008) was a Polish historian and politician. He was an important figure in the Solidarity Movement and in post-communist politics.]

Or in the Sandinistas’ case where Daniel Ortega, when he handed over power to Violeta Chamorro, remained as army commander in chief.

[Daniel Ortega (1945 – ) is a Nicaraguan politician who has been President of Nicaragua since 2007; previously he was President from 1985 to 1990.][Violeta Chamorro (1929 – ) is a Nicaraguan political leader, former president and publisher.]

Consider the tragic experience of the Arab Spring in which the protesters arrive and the Muslim Brotherhood end up in power but the army is untouchable. And in the end, in the case of Egypt, the army regains power.

[The Arab Spring is a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests (both non-violent and violent), riots, and civil wars in the Arab world that began in 2010 and spread throughout the countries of the Arab world.] [The Muslim Brotherhood is a transnational Islamist organization which was founded in Egypt in 1928 by the Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassan al-Banna.]

So we had to be very careful that the army did not regain power. But it was not easy if we thought we wanted to place the army under civilian control and then prosecute many of the army’s officials (which we did) for human rights violations.

And afterwards we had to keep order in the country to demonstrate that those of us who were newly arrived to power were better able to govern than the right with the military.