... and all the right-wing apologists have been coming out of the woodwork. "Only 3,000 dead" they cry, and he "saved Chile from socialism" (oh noes!).
As if 200,000 people suffering "extreme trauma" (source: Latin American Institute on Mental Health and Human Rights (ILAS)) and the possibility of "socialism" is an excuse to engage in a military coup against an elected government.
"But Pinochet fixed the economy!" is a common response. Well did he?
The recently deceased Milton Friedman "took pride in the Chilean 'economic miracle'." But according to Walden Bello:
Free-market policies subjected the country to two major depressions in one decade, first in 1974-75, when gross domestic product (GDP) fell by 12%, then again in 1982-83, when it dropped by 15%. Contrary to ideological expectations about free markets and robust growth, average GDP growth in the period 1974-89 - the radical Jacobin phase of the Friedman-Pinochet revolution - was only 2.6%. By comparison, with a much greater role of the state in the economy during the period 1951-71, Chile's economy grew 4% a year.
By the end of the radical free-market period, both poverty and inequality had increased significantly. The proportion of families living below the "line of destitution" had risen from 12% to 15% between 1980 and 1990, and the percentage living below the poverty line, but above the line of destitution, had increased from 24% to 26%. By the end of the Pinochet regime, some 40% of Chile's population, or 5.2 million of a population of 13 million, was poor.
In terms of income distribution, the share of the national income going to the poorest 50% of the population declined from 20.4% to 16.8%, while the share going to the richest 10% rose dramatically from 36.5% to 46.8%.