Chile: the balanced view : a recopilation of articles about the Allende years and after

took part in the hunt for Pepe told me that he gave himself up lo an advance palrol without firing a single shof. "He said that he did nol want to risk his wife's life. But il seems lo me that he was not a serious guerrilla. What was she doing up there in the first place?" Pepe gave his firsl press interview, to an enterprising young Chilean journalist, back in April 1971. He quickly gained a reputalion as "Chile's Che Guevara"-a title that seems rather absurd in retrospect. He talked lo the press about the need for a "continental revolution"·designed lo create a "un ion of socialist republics" in Latin America. But Pepe's chiefvirtue was that, unlíke the MIR's "guerrilla theosophísts", as a Communist crilic once called them, he had some claim to presenl himself as a kind of "working-class revolulio– nary". He was the son of a peasant farmer from Magallanes who managed to buy himself a small farm after he won a lottery prize, He sludied foreslry al the University of Valdivia, but he abandoned his studies after six months in order to join the grindingly poor tímber– workers on the big estates.up around Panguipulli. Helped by the local left-wing governor .(who helped him lo escape from Ihe police on one occasion) he organised a series of violent land-seizures. I was probably the last foreigner to see Comandante Pepe alive. I managed to visit him in the prison in the drizzly southern city of Valdivia where he was held afler his capture, 1 found a man in his early thírties, short, with a lean, sharp face, several days' growth of beard, and bright but barely focused eyes like polished marbles. He seemed physically well although (Iike Che Guevara) he was an asthmatic and is said to have been treated for lung complaints in Cuba and Hungary. He was also very cool and selfpossessed, although bitter about his publ ic image. "The world press and Chilean television have done me irreparable harm", he told me, "They gave me the title of Comandante, which I never wanted, They attributed acts to me that I never committed". Pepe's wife Yolanda, whom I visited in the neighbouring municipal jail (the most modern building in Valdivía) where she was being held separately, shared hís víews about the medía. When 1 asked herwhether shefeltthatthe press had made a myth (un mito) out of Pepe, she thought thay I had used the word humito, which means a líltle puff of smoke. "Yes", she reDlied, "every day the press was makíng smoke around my husband". When 1 asked her whether she felt that Pepe came to see himself as a second Che Guevara -as his admirers made hím out to be- she saíd that "That question is very seditious for my husband, I can't answer it, but I can tell you that I also put it to hím", Yolanda begged that Pepe's life should be spared, for the sake of their infant son who was slaying with her father in the Nueva La Habana pQblación in Santiago. Pepe himself appeared conseious of what lay in store for him: "1 am not worried for myself. 1 will be united with the march of hístory". He was judged by a military eourt and sentenced to death for his guerrilla actívitíes. The sentence was carried out at 8.40 p.m. on 3 October. There was asad Bonnie-and-Clyde atmosphere about the whole thíng. One could not think of Pepe as a serious guerrilla, stíll less as a terrorist red in tooth and claw. But more serious contenders will follow. THE NEW ORDER What road will Chile follow now? It will be a double tragedy if the alternatíve to the "Marxist experiment" proves to be nothing better than a blinkered, savagely repressíve military dictatorship, The way that the generals have set out to fulfíl Iheir self-elected mission lO "eradicale the Marxíst caneer" makes one think ot whal Francois Mauriac, in sorrow, said about the revenge inflicted on the men of Viehy by' his eomrades from the Freneh Resistance: "The idea of decapitating a head still capable ofthought is unwarranta– ble.. ," In fairness, ít has lo be saíd Ihat the generals are beinQ reviled as much tar imaginary crimes as for real ones. There has been a widespread suspension of the critieal faculty in 54