Chilean voters revive the ghost of Pinochet
Posted by: John Phoenix
‘The rich people in my country were always foreigners –
let them fly off to Miami with their aunties.
I don’t want my country divided –
let them take their tune somewhere far, far away.’
These defiant words by Chile’s Nobel Prize-winning poet Pablo Neruda were set to music by his compatriot Victor Jara early in the fateful year of 1973. A few months later, Jara – a communist – was tortured and killed days after the military coup led by General Augusto Pinochet. Neruda, a fellow communist, also died – quite possibly poisoned – while in hospital in the aftermath of the coup.
In December 2025 the Chilean electorate chose a professed admirer of Pinochet, José Antonio Kast, as the country’s new president. In the first round of the election the ...
