Terror Attacks Send Jitters Through Chile

A leftist terror campaign is sending ill winds of insecurity through Chile’s blossoming democracy.

Many Chileans fear that if authorities do not put a stop to the terrorism soon, it may become a long-term threat to political stability.

After 16 years of military dictatorship, marked by frequent gusts of harsh repression and anti-government terrorism, the return of democratic rule in Chile in March, 1990, brought hopes that political violence would end.

But ultra-leftist groups have carried out scores of bombing and shooting attacks in the past 13 months.

The fatalities have included a retired police colonel, an army major, a regional chief of investigative police and a doctor accused of working with torturers under the dictatorship. Gustavo Leigh, a retired air force general and former member of the military junta, was wounded in a March, 1990, attack.

The one attack that seems to have shaken the country most was the April 1 assassination of Sen. Jaime Guzman, leader of a right-wing opposition party. He had been a key legal adviser in Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s iron-fisted regime but was also known for his religious devotion, keen intellect and personal warmth.

Guzman’s assassination and several others have been attributed to the “Autonomous” faction of the Manuel Rodriguez Patriotic Front, founded in the early 1980s by members of the Communist Party. They named the group after a guerrilla leader in Chile’s war for independence. Although the front’s main sector has officially renounced violence, the Autonomous faction continues to advocate armed revolution.

Another armed and active group, the Lautaro Youth Movement, is said to be formed by embittered young leftists with anarchistic tendencies. It is named for a famous Araucanian Indian warrior.

The Autonomous faction is estimated to have as many as 2,000 members; several other armed groups, including Lautaro, are believed to have a combined total of several hundred. Although they are not seen as an immediate threat to democracy, their capacity for disruption has become increasingly apparent.

The extreme left has a variety of possible motives for continuing the violence despite the return of democracy:

* Because elections, not armed resistance, ended the dictatorship, ultra-leftists won no share of power and have little stake in the new system.

* Pinochet is keeping the important post of army commander during a transitional period, so the left’s archenemy has yet to be vanquished.

* Although moderate Socialists share power with Christian Democrats in the current government, the far left views the system as a “bourgeois democracy” that does not give power to the popular masses.

The Autonomous faction is said to have access to stashes of automatic rifles and other arms smuggled into Chile by Communists in the mid-1980s. Authorities uncovered thousands of rifles then, but more are believed to be hidden still.

Genaro Arriagada, a vice president of the Christian Democratic Party, said the current government was initially ill-equipped to fight terrorism.

Before he left power, Pinochet disbanded the regime’s intelligence police force, and none of its files on subversive groups were turned over to the new administration, Arriagada said, adding, “They didn’t give us one bit of data.”

The democratic government has increased the budget of the plainclothes investigative police by 400% and has expressed interest in help from Spain and Italy in developing anti-terrorist techniques. After the Guzman assassination, President Patricio Aylwin created a Coordinating Council for Public Security to oversee anti-terrorist action and to work as a liaison between police and military intelligence units.

Arriagada said the army “undoubtedly” maintains its own system of anti-subversive intelligence, parallel to the police system.

The Independent Democratic Union, the late Sen. Guzman’s conservative political party, complained in a press conference last week that the government has not done enough to fight terrorists. “For the moment, Chilean democracy is solid, strong,” Jovino Novoa, a party vice president, said later. “I don’t see a risk of destabilization in the short or medium term. I do see a risk that terrorism, when not controlled effectively, grows and becomes a destabilizing factor.”

Novoa’s party is proposing that a new central intelligence bureau be created to control terrorism before it becomes uncontrollable. But human rights advocates express fear that creating a political police agency could result in widespread violations of human rights--leading to more terrorist action in retaliation.

Such a vicious cycle of violence is one of Chile’s big fears as terrorism continues to alarm the country. Some Chileans say that, if the society became increasingly steeped in violence, concern for human rights could be overshadowed, democracy could lose credibility and nostalgia for authoritarian government could grow.

More immediately, anti-terrorist sentiment is giving a boost to the Independent Democratic Union. Since Guzman’s assassination, a party membership drive has signed up more than 10,000 new members, reinforcing rightist opposition to the center-left administration.

“The only thing terrorism does is legitimize the right,” Christian Democrat Arriagada said.