E Contrario

During my university days, on my bedroom wall used to hang this poster “Chile: Hasta Cuando?” It was a documentary by Australian filmmaker David Bradbury. Being a young student, I was fascinated by revolutionary struggles in Latin America. David Bradbury’s films including Nicaragua: No Pasaran, South of the Border, etc. were my introductory education material to Latin American struggles.

It might seem odd that the new Chilean democracy had great difficulty to prosecute Pinochet. In fact dictators were not necessarily hated by everybody.

David Bradbury enlightened us about John Denver. John Denver was interviewed while attending a country music festival in Santiago. He was recorded saying that everything was fine in Chile. When asked about human rights violations, he said “I don’t see any.”

Not that I ever like his genre, it still gave me an extra reason to stay away from country music.

My deepest impression was a profound saying by a Chilean capitalist: “This is a government that lets you do what you like, under certain rules. The only freedom we don’t have is political.”

Sounds familiar. Malaysian authoritarian leaders are certainly in fully agreement with him. The so-called ‘Asian values’ proposed by Lee Kuan Yew and Mahathir often argued that developing countries cannot afford the luxury of human rights and democracy. It is evident that in both Latin America and Asia, dictators share the same cultural values.

The big entrepreneurs, the rich and famous loved Pinochet, as their freedom was never denied. David Bradbury asked the wife of this Chilean capitalist about the torture of dissidents under the junta. The fat woman, with jewels hanging all over her body—an image I remember always—scorned at the allegation of torture: “Why torture someone when you can shoot them?”

The death of General Augusto Pinochet marked the end of those crazy years. Leftist democratic forces again return to their dominance in most Latin American states. Here, Malaysia has never experienced a military junta, yet in all practicality, we are a one-party state ruled by a autocratic and conservative racial leadership. We too cry out: Hasta Cuando?