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Freedom Collection

Interviews with Ricardo Lagos

Interviewed December 27, 2024

So the question of human rights was becoming more and more important. But at the same time, especially after ten years of dictatorship, social conditions and economic conditions were a huge…

Oil prices increased in ’82 and that was a very difficult question to tackle from the point of view of the dictatorship.

In fact, the gross domestic product of Chile in one year went down fourteen percent. Can you imagine an economy that goes down fourteen percent? Unemployment was about twenty or twenty five percent.

So the social conditions were extremely difficult and this was the beginning of the end of Pinochet because social protest emerged in ’82,’83. [Augusto Pinochet (1915 – 2006) was dictator of Chile between 1973 and 1990.]

And at the same time there was some kind of new movements around the old political parties. And here it is important what you mentioned in the sense that in the Socialist Party there was an internal discussion [about] what kind of reform had to be established in that party.

If they were going to be able to [stay] and to work together, particularly with the Christian Democrats, that was a very important party in Chile. Until what extent the idea was to restore democracy and in order to restore democracy you needed a very wide common front of all the democratic forces in Chile, no matter what you thought from the point of view of ideology.
And in fact, in 1993, the so called Alianza Democrática, Democratic Alliance, was the first formal political institution being formed and at that time I was rather involved in the internal politics of the Socialist Party. [The Democratic Alliance of Chile (Spanish: Alianza Democrática de Chile) was a coalition of left-wing parties from 1942 to 1946, which succeeded to the Popular Front headed by Pedro Aguirre Cerda´s government (1938-1941).]

It is funny, because politics were forbidden in Chile and political parties were forbidden in Chile. Therefore I couldn’t build anything in politics “openly”. It was a clandestine operation.
So no matter that I was working for the United Nations during the day, in the evening I was working in these kinds of things. In the end, the Democratic Alliance became public. Then the Socialist Party asked me to be its representative in that alliance. And that meant that I had to resign from my post in the United Nations.

That was a very… I would say… peculiar moment because I remember that my family was rather big at that time. I talked to my wife, my kids were already teenagers, and I talked to them and told them: “Look, I am going to resign, things are going to be a little more difficult. I am going to be involved [in] fighting against Pinochet”.

Among the socialists, I was one of the few living in Chile. Most of the leaders of the Socialist Party were living abroad, they couldn’t return to Chile or they had been killed.

So I was one of the few and we started working with some leaders of the Christian Democrats, like President Alwyn, like Gabriel Valdez and some others, members of the Radical Party. And during those days the Communist Party and some other part of the Socialists were very much, in a sense, linked to defeating Pinochet.

[Patricio Aylwin Azócar (1918- ) is a Chilean Christian Democrat politician, lawyer and former senator. He was the first president of Chile after democracy was restored in 1990.]

The usual slogan was: “all kinds of struggle is justified. All kinds of instruments can be used.” And we said: “Look, if you are going to use violent instruments, they are going to defeat us. This is a regular army; you cannot defeat a regular army with two or three cannons or things like that.”

So I think that was important in Chile. There was a huge discussion among the forces opposed to Pinochet [about] what kind of instruments we were going to use.

And I think that since [because of] Pinochet we knew. The Constitution of Pinochet was approved in 1980 and eight years later it was going to be necessary to have a plebiscite by which the Commanders of the Army, the Navy and the Air Force and the Carabineros [Police] were going to propose somebody to continue the work of Pinochet.

[The Chilean national plebiscite was a national referendum held in October 1988 to determine whether de facto Chilean President, Gen. Augusto Pinochet should extend his rule for another eight years.]

For us it was told that the person they were going to choose was going to be Pinochet. So we knew in ’86 or in ’85 that in ’88, Pinochet would have to go through a plebiscite.

And that was the first time that we knew in advance that [that] was the road, the map that Pinochet had to walk in order to remain in power. Therefore, if we were able to prepare ourselves to defeat him in the plebiscite, we could make it.

During those days, I remember, there was a plebiscite in the Philippines with President Marcos and he was defeated. And then there was a coup, etc., etc.

[Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos, Sr. (1917 –1989) was a Filipino lawyer and politician who served as President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986.]

And the most difficult part was how we were going to convince the Chilean people that it was possible to defeat a dictator through a vote. By definition, if you are a dictator, you are not going to give up.

Otherwise you are not a dictator.