Chile’s Welcome Mat

Augusto Pinochet, master of repressing popular demonstrations, stayed the goons of his police forces the other day to allow 300 of his supporters to blockade the Santiago airport and delay by almost two hours the entry into the city of “Chile’s worst enemy in the West,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

The demonstration was inspired and financed by Pinochet’s government, according to the American Embassy. The government of Chile does not appreciate the senator’s concern about its totalitarian rule, its suspension of democratic institutions, its atrocities, its violations of human rights.

Pinochet’s regime made no secret of its resentment of the senator’s “meddling.” The senator made no secret of the legitimacy of his inquiry.The U.S. government has pumped $2 billion into troubled Chile in the last two years to ease a financial crisis that includes $20 billion of national debt. Pinochet should not be surprised that most Americans share the senator’s curiosity about what those billions have bought.

Kennedy must have been at least bemused by the paradox of this squalid dictatorship orchestrating a demonstration, ostensibly a means of showing the popular will, to try to frustrate the visit of one come to advocate authentic freedom for the people of Chile.