Interviews with Genaro Arriagada

My problem with [President Salvador] Allende’s government (I wrote a book on the subject) was that if you take the statements of the parties that supported Salvador Allende, it is not true that they wanted to create a second model of socialism, different from Lenin’s and from that of the Soviet Union, that would be characterized by the combination of democracy and socialism.

[Salvador Allende (1908-1973) was president of Chile between 1970 and 1973. He was removed from office in a military coup d’état. Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin) (1870 –1924) was a Russian communist revolutionary, politician and political theorist.]

The Chilean Communist Party was the most pro-Soviet of the world’s communist parties. The Socialist Party was to the left of the Chilean Communist Party. Consequently, we had well-founded reasons to think that if they managed to gain power, we would have a dictatorship of the proletariat.

That is in declarations of both parties – the Communist and Socialist Parties. As such, my problem with Allende’s government was not his intent to create greater social justice. It was that I believed their statements, (which is in one of my published books), that they wanted traditional socialism with a dictatorship of the proletariat, then later, perhaps, a single party.
Those were the reasons for my opposition. In the case of Pinochet… [it was] because he began with brutality. The human rights violations were ferocious. Within seventy days he had intervened in the universities, appointing military personnel as their rectors.

[Augusto Pinochet (1915-2006) was dictator of Chile between 1973 and 1990.]

He dissolved the unions and the political parties and shut down the press. So if someone had opposed Salvador Allende or the forces that supported him, because [Allende] could lead [Chile] to a dictatorship of the proletariat, the only proper thing was to oppose that dictatorship of the right which had a completely unacceptable degree of criminality and violence.

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.