Interviews with Genaro Arriagada

At that time in Chile there was a majority of the country that was infuriated, that believed in and supported the military in an irrational manner. There were very few voices that arose to defend the rights of the persecuted.

Very few initially, no one in the press… Fortunately, at that time the Catholic Church was under the direction of Cardinal Silva Henríquez and he committed the church to the defense of the persecuted.

[Raúl Silva Henríquez, SDB (1907 –1999) was a Chilean Cardinal of the Catholic Church.]

Of course, the right and the military accused him of being a “red priest,” a communist.

We had the great distinction that when the repression occurred in Chile, the Chilean Catholic Church stood in defense of the rights of the persecuted. Who were the persecuted? The left. The “Marxists Leninists,” as Pinochet said.

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

[The Church] defended them. By contrast, when the brutal repression hit in Argentina, the Catholic Church stood silent.
When I have written about the transition, I have made a comparison between the Polish Catholic Church, which defended the persecuted of the communist regime, and the Czechoslovak Catholic Church (at that time the Czech and Slovak republics had not divided). The Catholic Church stood silent in Czechoslovakia.

One could say that the Polish Church was more like the Chilean Church, and the Czechoslovak Church was more like the Argentinian Church in its silence. It was a complicit silence.

Those were very bitter times. Very, very bitter.

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.