Mr. Chucko Looks at Chile With One ‘Eye’ Closed

Mr. Chucko goes to Chile. . . .

There he was, that beacon of wisdom, that oracle of understanding, that light of learning, Chuck Henry.

There he was on KABC-TV Channel 7 Wednesday night, hosting another edition of “Eye on L.A.,” fronting a travelogue from a Latin paradise and pleasure dome where everybody is happeeeeeeee .

There he was, having the time of his life in “the riddle that is Chile.” There he was, trying to make some sense of this “very misunderstood country.”

He hadn’t read the travel brochures for nothing.

More than its host, Henry also produces “Eye on L.A.” in association with Channel 7. And when people learned that the show was going to Chile, he confessed to viewers, well, gee, quite honestly they were baffled: “Where is it, and why would you ever wanna go there?”

For funnnnnnn!

First stop, Santiago. “It’s a great place to begin your Chilean adventure,” Henry said.

And do Chileans know something about adventure or what?

On the screen, accompanied by exciting Latin music, were the magnificent pictures that “Eye on L.A.” is known for. The sights. The scenery. The flowers. The artifacts. The food. The fashions. The beaches.

The girls.

Henry was simply up to his bongos. He was elated about Chile’s “simple and sophisticated” people, about its “mystery and romance,” about its “elusive charm,” about its coastal “playground of pleasure,” about its “sea air and tranquility,” about its “Rivieria,” about its lake regions being a “familiar vacation spot for Chileans who want to get away from it all.”

Uh, Mr. Chucko. Haven’t you forgotten something?

Chile has an enormous poor class, and Santiago--the capital where we began our “adventure”--is ringed by sprawling shantytowns that “Eye on L.A.” seemed to have missed.

Under President Augusto Pinochet, moreover, Chile has also been one of the most repressive military dictatorships in Latin America, a nation where opposition to Pinochet has been violently crushed, where dissidents have been murdered or have disappeared without a trace.

But Henry covered that by slipping in 31 seconds of savagely euphemistic commentary over pictures of police:

“Another thing you’ll notice in Santiago are the military police. It’s been a military metropolis since 1973, when the armed forces of Gen. Augusto Pinochet led a coup that overthrew the Marxist regime of Salvador Allende. For a while, Santiago was a city under siege. But a 1988 referendum by the people has called for free elections by 1990. The Chileans see their future as going in a new direction toward democracy and a stable economy.”

Henry added later: “They have weathered the difficulties of their past . . . and they will actively participate in their own destiny.”

Henry wasn’t out on this limb alone, however. His rosy forecast was echoed by John Hughes.

That’s John Hughes, sales manager of the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza. That’s the Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza that was prominently displayed in the Chile program and that provided free accommodations for “Eye on L.A.” in Santiago.

On the off chance that there were alternative views on life inside Chile, I asked a spokeswoman for the human rights group Amnesty International USA to comment on Henry’s brief assessment of Chile’s politics.

“I don’t think that the statement is necessarily inaccurate, but there are great errors of omission,” the spokeswoman, a Chilean specialist, said from Washington. “It doesn’t give the true picture.”

She said that Chile’s “horrific” human rights record has improved in the last year, but that repression continues. “Clandestine groups, appearing to be linked to the security forces, operate as death squads,” she said. “Arbitrary arrests still occur and torture still occurs. The difference is that instead of being tortured at detention centers, people are tortured in vans taking them from one location to the next.”

Why would “Eye on L.A.” pick Chile for a travelogue?

“We were planning a trip to Antarctica and we were looking for another country to do on the way,” Vic Heman, the show’s executive producer, said Thursday. “We got some tourism brochures from Chile, and it looked interesting.”

Heman said that because “Eye on L.A.” is not a news or “political show,” it bore no responsibility to mention Chile’s dark side. “We weren’t going there to cover human rights violations,” he said.

Heman pointed out that the Los Angeles Times’ travel section ran a piece on Chile in March.

A Chile travelogue is not a new idea at “Eye on L.A.,” said Erik Nelson, who left as the show’s coordinating producer in 1987. “I remember Chuck mentioning it to me when I was doing my final show in January, and I went insane over it.”

Nelson acknowledged that “Eye on L.A.” has always been a frothy show devoted to tourism. “But I can’t remember us ever doing anything as oblivious to reality as this,” he said. “This is essentially a passive endorsement of what, at best, is a murky political situation.”

On the screen Wednesday night, Henry said that the best thing about travel was “going off the beaten path.” One could argue that the entire show--which also omitted mentioning the recent Chilean grape controversy that threatened to destroy Chile’s already shaky economy--was off the beaten path.

“Eye on L.A.” did display a handsome piece of sculpture that Henry said was made with materials available only in Chile and Afghanistan.

Afghanistan? Uh-oh. Is there a Holiday Inn Crowne Plaza there?

Mr. Chucko is packing his bags already.