Dictators and the Changing Face

Table of Contents

Chile--------------------------------------------------------1-3

Argentina-----------------------------------------------------------3-

Brazil------------------------------------------------------

Chile

The first person to claim dictatorial power in Chile was Bernardo O'Higgins. O'Higgins gained power of Chile in 1817. O'Higgins made quite a few changes in Chile, but there were a number of issues with the citizens that he caused. Although some might have been for the better, others caused a lot controversy. Chile at that time had two basic parties. The Liberals and the Conservatives. Mostly there was the issue of the Roman Catholic church limiting the number of their Saints' days. Regarding school, he was in favor of secular schools rather than Catholic schools. He allows Protestants and Catholics to be buried in the nation's cemeteries. Also he was in favor of importing foreign books to Chile.

However, the flaw that O'Higgins has was the payment of wages to the military. He failed to do so. In 1823, he was forced to resign and hand over his "power" to a new dictator because he was so unpopular. However, although it may be looked upon as nothing, O'Higgins brought something to Chile that was major. He brought them emancipation from Spain by taking over command of patriotic forces.

After the downfall of O'Higgins, there was Ramon Freire, who ruled from 1823 to 1826. Freire was involved with the liberation of Chile alongside O'Higgins. In fact, he was the one who helped to get a certain area independence that the Spanish still had and ruled. Freire overtook O'Higgins laws with the church adding more conflict of how the church should be organized. This, of course, brought on more controversy between the church and the government as there always has been and always will

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be.

To jump a couple of years ahead the dictator that is mostly recognized for Chile's prosperity is Augusto Pinochet. Seceding Salvador Allende, Pinochet came into power in 1973 and stayed in power until 1990. After overthrowing Allende from his place as President of Chile, Pinochet took over and was known as the most brutal leader in Latin America. Anyone who opposed him as a leader was either executed, tortured or killed. Along with his military coup, Pinochet humiliate the citizens of Chile by the violation of human rights.

He has committed crimes that no other leader had thought to do to keep the people in line. Over the course of his time as dictator of Chile, these crimes included the murder of 3,000 people, 1,000 mysteriously disappearing and thousands more tortured. Charges were pressed against Pinochet for his numerous crimes. In 1998, Pinochet was arrested at his home in London. After many trials, he was found guilty of many charges such as the raping of women, torture of the citizens, murder.

However, although Pinochet was viewed as a criminal, he brought good to the nation of Chile. Before Pinochet came to power, Chile was a very poor country. There was poverty and hardly any GDP at all. When Pinochet came to power, he improved the nation's economy by raising the nations GDP to the highest it has ever been in history. He introduced privatization which is to say that all the businesses and the industries were not the government's property but whoever owns it gets to keep it. But any income from that business would go straight to the nation's income. Also he lowered taxes based on a person's wealth, which made life a lot easier for

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the people who were not as prosperous as others.

Argentina

Argentina's government was based upon the military. His expanding power and during the military government originated from knowing a sector of the Argentine labor unions. From knowing each other began to promote labor laws that were demanded from the workers' movement.

PerÐ"Ñ-n worked very hard at trying to make the working class more prosperous. He expanded the number of unionized workers, and helped establish the powerful General Confederation of Labour (GCT), created in 1930. It was called this the "third position", between capitalism and communism. PerÐ"Ñ-n also pushed hard to industrialize the country; in 1947 he launched the first five-year plan to boost newly nationalized industries. This later on would be called peronism. It became an influence in Argentine political parties and is still