Interviews with Genaro Arriagada

Chile is shaped like a big test tube – long and narrow. And here, there have been the most varied kinds of political experiments.

I am an agnostic person. Nevertheless, the Christian Democratic Party is non-denominational. It was the big centrist party. I joined because I liked it. I could relate to its humanistic, democratic and moderate approach to politics. Those were my reasons.

The majority in the Christian Democratic Party is Christian and Catholic. But some of the party leaders have been agnostic and we have never had problems within the party. The party is very respectful of the religious convictions of its members.

I was very much in favor of Eduardo Frei Montalva’s [Christian Democratic] government – which was the other revolution, one could say. He oversaw great agrarian reform in Chile. He nationalized part of the copper industry. He expanded the labor unions.

[Eduardo Frei Montalva (1911 –1982) was president of Chile from 1964 to 1970.]

After Frei came Salvador Allende’s government. I opposed his government. I was a Christian Democrat. Our opposition to it, in hindsight, had certain characteristics. We did not want an orthodox socialist regime.

[Salvador Allende (1908-1973) was president of Chile between 1970 and 1973. He was removed from office in a military coup d’état.]

[Allende’s government was] a revolution like the Cuban revolution or like the ones in eastern Europe. But perhaps [our opposition] was very imprudent because, in the end, the relentless fight between the Christian Democrats and the parties of the left opened the door for the coup d’état.

As a result, though I had been a supporter of Frei’s government and I had opposed Allende’s government, I found myself facing a coup d’état in 1973, which we had opposed from the beginning.

[In 1973, General Augusto Pinochet staged a military coup and established a dictatorship in Chile that lasted until 1990.]

And so I spent seventeen years opposing the military regime. It is an intense history. Chile has been the scene of great political conflicts. This is so.

Genaro Arriagada Herrera is a Chilean attorney, political scientist, diplomat and politician.

Arriagada was born in 1943 and studied law at the University of Chile, graduating in 1965. He became active in politics and affiliated with the Christian Democratic Party in 1963. He worked on several of the party’s political campaigns. Following the military coup d’état in 1973, the regime of General Augusto Pinochet banned political parties. Arriagada became active in the democratic opposition to the military regime. From 1980 to 1989, he served as vice president of the Christian Democrats.
In 1988, Arriagada was chosen as Executive Secretary of the Concertación, the Coalition of Parties for Democracy, a broad coalition of political parties from across the political spectrum that opposed the military government.

In October 1988, the Pinochet regime called a national referendum asking Chileans whether they wanted to continue the military regime. As Executive Secretary of the Concertación, Arriagada became the director of the historic “No” Campaign, which opposed extending military rule. The opposition organized a large voter registration effort and mounted an upbeat campaign that urged voters to restore democracy to Chile.

As Chile returned to the democratic path, Arriagada served in multiple senior positions. He led Eduardo Frei Ruiz-Tagle’s successful presidential campaign in 1993 and then served as a minister in his government. He also ran the successful presidential campaign of Ricardo Lagos in 1999. In the late 1990s, Arriagada served as Chile’s ambassador to the United States.

Since leaving government service, Arriagada has held a variety of academic positions and has been affiliated with institutions such as the University of the Americas, the Inter-American Dialogue, the Wilson Center, and Harvard University’s Institute of Politics. He has also worked with democratic groups in countries like Bulgaria, Cuba, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay and Serbia.