General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte was inaugurated as President of Chile on March 11, beginning a further (eight-year) term in accordance with a new Constitution which entered into force on the same day.
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After attending a traditional thanksgiving mass celebrated by the Archbishop of Santiago, Cardinal Raul Silva Henriquez, and taking the oath of office before the president of the Supreme Court, Sr Israel Borquez Montero, Gen. Pinochet moved into the refurbished Moneda Palace, which had been unfit for use since it was bombed during the September 1973 military coup.
Gen. Pinochet (65), a' former military attache' in Washington, was promoted to the rank of general in 1970. He became C.-in-C. of the Army on a provisional basis in late 1972, taking over fully in mid-1973. After the military coup of Sept. 11, 1973, which overthrew President Salvador Allende, he became president of the junta. In June 1974 he was appointed head of state by decree and also remained head of the junta, which assumed legislative and executive powers. Gen. Pinochet assumed office as President in December 1974.
In an inaugural speech Gen. Pinochet established that political parties would remain banned and that he would continue to fight to eradicate the "ulcer" of political terrorism. On the same day he extended for a further six months the state of emergency (including a 2 a.m. to 5 a.m. curfew) which had been in force since 1973 and also introduced for an initial period of six months a "state of danger of disturbance of internal peace", as provided for under transitional clause 24 of the new Constitution. According to the Official Gazette, the "state of danger" was necessary because the country had recently "witnessed a series of actions of a terrorist nature against the lives and property of citizens" and because the police suspected the existence of plans to "subvert public order".
The "state of danger" enabled the President inter alia to order the detention of persons for up to five days in their homes or in places other than prisons, and to extend this period up to 15 days if "serious terrorist acts" had taken place. It also allowed him to restrict the right to hold meetings and to freedom of information (with respect to the founding and circulation of new publications), to prohibit the entry into or expel from Chilean territory anyone propagating totalitarian doctrines, and to order the confinement of persons in a specific locality for up to three months.
A decree-law promulgated on Feb.21 introduced courts-martial for crimes resulting in the death of members of the Government, the armed forces or the intelligence services. The Interior Ministry had already stated on Feb. 19 that it would seek the death penalty for five people alleged to be members of the Movement of the Revolutionary Left (MIR), who had been arrested the previous day and who were accused of the murder of Lt.-Col. Roger Vergara Campos in July 1980 and of seven other killings as well as of bank robberies and bomb attacks.
In a message sent to Santiago press agencies in February 1981 the MIR claimed to have carried out more than 100 attacks during 1980, among them Lt.-Col. Vergara's murder, and warned that it would intensify its campaign in 1981. Incidents reported during 1980 and claimed by or attributed to the MIR included the bombing of electricity pylons in the Santiago and Valparaiso areas on Nov. 11, which caused widespread blackouts, and bomb attacks on three banks in Santiago on Dec.30 in which one policeman was killed and three people injured.
On Feb. 16, 1981, political prisoners in several Chilean gaols initiated indefinite hunger strikes in protest at moves to disperse them among criminal inmates; relatives subsequently occupied the Austrian embassy in Santiago in solidarity and continued their action until the UN Human Rights Commission later that month appointed a representative to investigate the situation of political prisoners in Chile. The Swedish embassy was also occupied on Jan. 14-Feb. 3 by a group of Chileans protesting at the lack of proper housing in Santiago, while on March 10 two people alleged to be members of the MIR sought asylum in the French embassy; the Chilean Government's demand that they should be handed over to the authorities was resisted by France.
In the framework of moves to increase private provision of higher education, a law specifying that new private universities could be established if the Interior Ministry ruled that they would present no threat to national security and banning political activities of any kind from the universities was promulgated on Jan. 3, 1981. It also cut the existing number of courses by almost two-thirds to 12, down-grading courses such as philosophy, sociology and journalism to non-university level and allowing such courses less access to government finance.
In protest at the Government's educational policy and at the "persecution, imprisonment, expulsion and summary trials" of students and teachers, a group of students occupied the French embassy in Santiago on Jan. 21-22. A similar action had been staged on Jan. 12-21 at the regional office in Santiago of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in protest at the internal exile of certain students to remote parts of the country and the activities of the security forces at the University of Chile and the State Technical University, and (ii) to seek clarification of charges pending against a student leader, Srta Patricia Torres, for whom an arrest warrant had been issued.
Sr Jorge Alessandri Rodriguez (President of Chile from 1958 to 1964) resigned on Feb. 3, 1981, as president of the consultative Council of State (established in 1976A) and was replaced in this post by a new member, Sr Miguel Schwitzer, hitherto the ambassador to Britain (and a former Minister of Justice), although he retained his membership of the Council. Earlier, the Council's vice-president, Sr Gabriel Gonzalez Videla (President of Chile from 1946 to 1952), had died in August 1980.
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