Priest-professor reflects on Pinochet’s strong-arm regime in Chile

[struggle4progress]

01/04/2007 Ed Langlois

At a 1986 bridge dedication, Holy Cross Father Claude Pomerleau refused to share a stage with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. Meanwhile, students from St. George School in Santiago, where Father Pomerleau was rector, chanted slogans predicting the strong man’s fall.

Within hours, a military helicopter hovered over the campus and 10 Chilean soldiers with large weapons leapt out. Using rough language and threats, they broke up the protest, also sending a thinly veiled message to the priest who had snubbed their commander in chief: You’re not really in charge here ...

The priest, who teaches political science at the University of Portland as well as at the University of Chile, led St. George from 1985 to 1991. He was chosen to head the elite school, he says, not for academic prowess, but because his superiors considered him safe from malfeasance; Father Pomerleau’s sister was, and is, married to U.S. Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont. The notion was that Pinochet would not harm someone with such close ties to the U.S. government ...

The Congregation of Holy Cross at one time attempted to bring low-income students to St. George, offering scholarships. But military officials nixed the process. Holy Cross responded by founding another school called Andacollo ...

http://www.sentinel.org/articles/2007-1/15157.html

[SharonAnn]

1. Thanks for this article. My relatives there also expressed shock that

Pinochet was found to have taken millions for his own personal benefit. His wife and children are still charged in financial "irregularities".

Even those relatives who were supporters of Pinochet have lost all respect for what they thought were the positive things he accomplished. Information about the persecutions, tortures, and killings of opposition members seriously damaged his stature. Then, when the information came out about the millions he had put in foreign bank accounts, the final scales dropped from their eyes.

[struggle4progress]

2. Forgive me if I do not understand. An elected government deposed by military coup,

thousands murdered or disappear, torture by DINA widespread -- surely everyone has known this since the mid-1970s. But some people somehow and amazingly do not hear anything about it for decades; learning of it only "damages the stature" of the dictator in their eyes -- but when his financial misdeeds come to light, THEN they lose all respect for him.

Yes, forgive me if I do not understand: after so many dead, so many broken, we should finally be scandalized that Pinochet was -- a thief ...