I Am The Maitreya

One of the characters of my newly bought book, ‘Children of Cain’ (haven’t finished it, yet), passed away this Sunday– General Augusto Pinochet. News read, in the midst of his departure, there are mixed sentiments of rejoice and mourning, in Chile.  Well, I could understand one prong of the bifurcated emotion—rejoice, on his departure, since he always topped the roster on the bad ass dictators around the world, but at the same time mourning of the Chileans on his passing away completely baffled me.

Popular media have us believed that General Pinochet wouldn’t weigh an ounce less, if measured against other ruthless dictators in scale of evilness/vileness—Edi Amin, Saddam Hussein, and many more. During his reign, Pinochet killed over 3000 political dissents, 28,000 people were tortured in secret detention centers, and hundreds of thousands of political exiles. These numbers are irrefutable fact, which put a legitimate stamp of a monster on Pinochet’s forehead. So, why would people mourn over such an individual? Why would Santiago ablaze in fire, in the clash of those contradictory sentiments?                 
                       Santiago of capital Chile: Could have been Kathmandu.

The answer to this obscure question lies, somewhere, in yet more obscure nation of
Himalaya—Nepal. There might be better explained answers to this question, but for every Nepali, I guess this should have a strong parallel. When a large part of the population in the outfit of Maoists, in the rural areas, are dead against the idea of monarchy, and substantially a huge demonstration of protestors with different political ideologies got down to streets to show their disgust/contempt in the king’s rule, in the April Rev., in the capital, same time around equally large amount of people were standing in the line at Naryan-hiti to get Dashain Tika from the same king. It’s a fine example of public display of simultaneous contempt and reverence for the same institution, from different pools of population, which is pretty confusing, at the same time quite difficult to discern the subtleties at the cursory glance. I guess it was the same confusion for me, to read the mixed sentiments of people of
Chile on Pinochet. For my linear understanding of Chile, it should have been just simply disgust for him and rejoice over his death, from everyone. But, it isn’t. Pinochet, took the reign after the bloody coup, aided and funded by CIA, and Chile was the last bastion against the tide of Marxism that swept Latin America. Chile was a proxy war for the US, against the communist block. With the favorable trades and funds from the US, Chile’s economy was stable; in fact doing a lot better than ever, there was a market confidence, trade and commerce was up. Any hard working citizen could reap the benefits of this upward economical trend, only downside was, no dissenting views were tolerated. All dissents were sent to gulag.

So, who were mourning over Pinochet’s death, weren’t just his cohorts and cronies of the old oligarchs, but were simple hard working people too, apparently who had a better life under him than any other political larders or systems. If you were bovine as cow, system was perfect. There is no distinct demarcation of right and wrong, I believe, it’s entirely a personal choice, how much one is willing to trade off freedom of thoughts for economical advantage and security of all sorts. Once, again no one can argue, if one is completely happy in George Orwellnian society of his book 1984.  Once, again, it’s a personal choice. And, in the same breath, I strongly believe, one shouldn’t be persecuted for having differing views as well.

Now, I understand, why Chileans are mourning and rejoicing at the same time. But, as someone said, ‘amount of tear drops in the world is always constant.’ If one is dead, another is born, somewhere else.

What Pinochet did to Chile was to polarize it between, one who would give away their freedom of thoughts for economic advantage, and one who wouldn’t. Apparently, who valued free thinking society, out numbered him, and he had to step down. Contrary to popular demand, he was never tried for his crimes. I don’t know which one was triumphant at the end in Chile—forgiving and moving forward, or failure to make any dent at strong oligarchs, which was down but not out, still mocking at the victor.

Now, do you see the parallel?