State of Siege

By Hunter R. Clark

Pinochet cracks down hard

The troops struck promptly at dawn. Supported by spotter helicopters and armored cars, up to 1,500 soldiers dressed in combat gear cordoned off La Victoria, a slum on the southern outskirts of Santiago that houses some 50,000 poor and unemployed. They searched and in some cases ransacked the ramshackle dwellings in a hunt for weapons and "subversive" literature. "Remain calm," the troops blared through loudspeakers. "Anyone who leaves his home will be taken as an agitator."

Within seven hours, they had rounded up 7,000 men and led them, handcuffed or with hands behind their heads, to dark green military buses that took them to a nearby soccer stadium for interrogation. The scene was an eerie reminder of the mass arrests that occurred in the wake of the coup that brought General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, 68, to power in 1973, which has been depicted in the 1982 film Missing. Although the majority of those rounded up last week were later released, at least 227 remained in detention along with 312 others banished for 90 days to remote camps for "internal exiles."

It was the second major raid since Pinochet declared a "state of siege" on Nov. 6. The measure, adopted for the first time since 1978, came in response to a rash of bombings, labor strikes and street protests, which have become a regular feature of Chilean life since May 1983. It allows the authorities to ban all public meetings, make mass arrests, impose censorship and send the secret police ram paging through the offices of political parties and unions. In addition, the Rev. Ignacio Gutierrez, a Spanish-born Roman Catholic priest who heads the Vicariate of Solidarity, the most active human-rights organization, had his visa lifted and was permanently banned from returning to Chile after a conference in Rome.

Even though harsh crackdowns had occurred under previous, less embracing "emergencies," the most recent raids were more extensive. The government's stated aim was to pack off criminals who have joined forces with political activists in the slums. But the actual purpose was to spread a climate of fear among slumdwellers, who provide the biggest manpower pool for antigovernment protests: about 70% of the men in slums like La Victoria are unemployed.

Ripples caused by the state of siege are still spreading. In Washington, U.S. Army Chief of Staff General John A. Wickham Jr. reportedly canceled a visit to Chile to signal the Reagan Administration's unhappiness with the measure. In Santiago, Archbishop Juan Francisco Fresno, a conservative who has become increasingly vocal as the Pinochet regime has become more repressive, drafted a six-page pastoral letter that was scheduled to be read Sunday to some 500,000 faithful in 244 parishes. It included a call for a 24-hour period of fasting and prayer on Nov. 23, four days before opposition parties, unions and business groups plan two days of national protest. "I want to be prudent, but I will not be a coward," Fresno wrote in the letter. "Wherever we are, at home or in the factory, in the slums, in the school or university, all of us must pray in silence and also talk about what we can do to build peace in Chile, based on truth, love and justice." With the press and the opposition muzzled, the church remains one of the few open channels of redress.

--By Hunter R. Clark. Reported by Gavin Scott/Santiago

With reporting by Gavin Scott