Chile 1973 – 2023: Half a Century Later, the Hate Remains

Editorial from Chilean online newpaper “El Mostrador”

The key question is whether the Chilean government has fulfilled a mandate of honesty and democratic decency regarding justice and truth; or if, on the contrary, its tepid actions have maintained the shadow of incompleteness, leaving the victims still humiliated a half century later. Hate and rancor not only steal peace of mind and forgetting, but in addition generate a mirror-image rejection among the hated people or groups. Unfortunately, everything indicates that in Chile we still haven’t achieved the minimum civilized consensus of understanding that coup ’d’etats should Never Ever be used as a recourse.

HAVANA TIMES – It’s a mistake to transform the careless words of the now former presidential delegate Patricio Fernandez – that the reasons for that tragic date could be argued about, but what happened afterwards was unacceptable – into a plebiscite on freedom of opinion, which in a democracy should never be in doubt.

The heart of the problem lies in whether the Chilean Government has really fulfilled a mandate of honesty and democratic decency regarding justice and truth; or if, on the contrary, its half-actions have maintained the shadow of incompleteness, leaving the victims humiliated a half century later. Justice and truth are matters of State in a heterogeneous and diverse democratic society, with rules and institutions, tribunals, civil and political rights.

The main actors in this drama are, on one hand, the State, the government of the moment, each with their political positions; and on the other, organized members of civil society, which recently have been termed “emotional communities”, a category of social and political protagonist rising from the experience of pain and humiliation that violence has bequeathed them.

In this perspective, emotions acquire ever-greater relevance for social action, a way of evoking part of the collective memory through the transmission of “narratives of pain,” the testimony of those who have experienced it. It’s a form of history and memory whose recognition on the part of the Chilean Governments since the return to democracy has been slow and difficult.

Humiliation and not really feeling part of the country’s history has spawned rancor and hatred as the primary emotions, ravaging those who make up the “emotional communities.” This contrasts with the rational responses the official regime expects. The political rationality that the government seeks to apply with measures that may or may not be correct, isn’t sufficient.

It should be added that hate or rancor not only steal peace of mind and the ability to forget, but in addition generate a mirror-image rejection among the people or groups that are hated. Hence, hatred – the most basic, devastating and primary impulse of human beings – becomes social, and people detest others for what they do, more than for what they are. More than instinct, this has to do with social and cultural factors such as the biases that education inoculates into the experiences of pain and humiliation in the collective memory.

Everything indicates that, unfortunately, we still haven’t achieved the minimum civilizing consensus of understanding that NEVER EVER again should coups d’etat be employed as a recourse for solving problems that are plaguing society, no matter how serious and severe those problems may be.

The State isn’t a psychological being, but it is a moral one, and together with the prudence to administer its actions in an austere manner, governments should have the level-headedness to correct the omissions in justice and truth that have generated a primordial hatred which persists in important segments of our society. They should seek to avoid a scenario where fifty more years later, that hatred is still rampant.

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