Chile’s Secret Nazi Past

The Colony: Chile’s Dark Past Uncovered

Al Jazeera (2013)

Film Review

This documentary concerns a secretive post-World II German colony in Chile. Named Colonia Dignidad, the colony was run as a cult by ex-Nazi pedophile and Baptist minister Paul Schaefer. Roughly 300 of Schaefer’s followers emigrated from Germanye in 1961, after he persuaded him the Soviets were about to invade. In Chile, Schaefer and his close circle of supporters were in close contact with Mengele, Rauff and other Nazi war criminals who escaped to South America.

On Schaefer’s orders, the cult removed babies from their parents’ custody at birth and raised them communally. Parents who tried to establish close relationships with their offspring were publicly punished humiliated and sometimes beaten. Cult members who escaped and sought sanctuary in the German embassy (in Santiago) were returned to the colony.

Children began a life of heavy farm labor at age 7. Allowed only one rest day a year, both children and adults worked 12-hour days seven days a week. Schaefer used the farm profits to expand his land holdings.

When the fascist dictator Pinochet came to power in a 1973 CIA coup, Schaefer made his hospital facilities available to the Chilean army to interrogate human rights activists under torture.

Despite the restoration of Chilean democracy in 1990, it would take the government until 2005 to investigate and close Colonia Dignidad. Schaefer (who died in 2010) was arrested and given a 20 year sentence for child molestation in 2005. Five of his accomplices were arrested and sent to jail in 2013. The sixth fled to Germany, which doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Chile.

Winfried Hempel, one of the children abused at the colony, has since become a lawyer. He’s suing the governments of Chile and Germany. He has compelling evidence that both were aware of the atrocities yet did nothing to stop them.

In 2019 the German government agreed to pay 50,000 euros to each of the 50 remaining victims. See https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-48318295

 

The Chile of the Pacific

Milton Friedman from Wikimedia Commons

(The 6th of 8 posts about my new life in New Zealand.)

An Early Laboratory for Neoliberal Reforms

Overall I have enjoyed numerous lifestyle advantages living in New Zealand. There are a few notable exceptions, of course, beyond the emotional isolation of being separated from my family and American friends. Most relate, either directly or indirectly, to New Zealand’s historic role as “the Chile of the South Pacific.” During the 1980s, New Zealand was used as a laboratory for the neoliberal reforms subsequently implemented by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

In theory, neoliberalism is a “market-driven” approach to economic and social policy that stresses the efficiency of free enterprise and opposes government regulation of corporate recklessness and any government role in public services other than law enforcement. In practice, neoliberal policies have been universally pro-corporate and anti-free market, promoting vast amounts of legislation (tax law, government contracts and direct corporate bail-outs) that favor large corporations at the expense of both small business and ordinary citizens.

The University of Chicago is usually credited as the birthplace (in the 1960s) for neoliberalism and Milton Friedman as its father. A frequently overlooked aspect of the CIA’s 1973 coup in Chile was the direct role University of Chicago economists played in assisting Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in setting out the neoliberal economic reforms enforced by his brutal regime. New Zealand played a similar role in the early eighties, by trying out neoliberal policies that were later adopted by Britain and the US.

New Zealand: a Second World Country

At present New Zealand is a relatively poor, second world country. It ranks 20th in GDP for OECD countries. Americans are always struck by the high cost of living here relative to wages and salaries. Although average income is much lower than in other developed countries, the cost of basic necessities is just as high. At times it’s much higher, particularly in the case of gasoline, home energy costs and fresh meat and fish.

Central heating is virtually non-existent – in part because so few people can afford it and in part because the (colder) South Island has no access to piped natural gas. Just so no one has any illusions about our climate, the New Zealand winter is relatively short. However except for the far north, it gets just as cold here as in northern California and the Pacific Northwest.

Here We Call It Rogernomics

In 1975 New Zealand was 10th in the OECD in per capita GDP. Prior to the eighties, the UK was always the primary importer of New Zealand lamb and dairy products. In the early 1980s, these policies changed, and Britain began to favor European Union trading partners over commonwealth countries.

Increasingly, however, many economists blame the draconian reforms Minister of Finance Roger Douglas enacted in 1984 for the decline in Kiwi living standards. So-called “Rogernomics” was responsible for the institutionalization of a large and steady wealth transfer (as profits and dividends) to overseas corporations. This in turn has led to a large, chronic accounts deficit (negative balance of trade), which has led to many other economic problems.

It’s only with the 2008 economic collapse and the non-existent US recovery that American analysts are starting to appreciate the devastating impact that “Reaganomics” – the main culprit in the virtual collapse of American manufacturing – had on the US economy.

In a country 1/60^th the size of the US, the damage was much more immediate and obvious.

 

The Common Misfortunes of Capitalism

Note cow in stream

(The 5th of 8 posts about my new life in New Zealand)

Obviously there is both an upside and a downside to living in New Zealand. All developed and developing countries are forced to operate under the same corporate-dominated capitalist system.

New Zealand is no exception and has many of the major economic and social problems other developed countries are experiencing. In a few areas, New Zealand has adopted some of the worst aspects of global capitalism, which results in uniquely negative consequences for the New Zealand public. For the most part, Kiwis retain their commitment to a “democratic socialism” as practiced in most of Europe. The result, in my view, is a society and culture that tends to be far more humane than is found in the US.

That being said, New Zealand shares a number of pernicious social problems found in all modern capitalist countries:

• Worsening income inequality – only 10% of Kiwis have incomes above $72,000 ($58,216) in US dollars), whereas half the population earns less than $24,000 ($US 19,405).
• Irrational and blind adherence to a continuous economic growth paradigm. In a small country like New Zealand, this has a devastating impact, in terms of water contamination, habitat destruction and environmental toxins in the food chain. Over the past two decades, dairy intensification has made the most of New Zealand’s picturesque waterways unsuitable for swimming (due to cow shit and fertilizer run-off.
• Slow uptake of renewable energy production (owing nonexistent finance capital or government subsidies)
• Slow uptake of sprawl prevention strategies essential to the development of cost-effective public transportation.
• Heavy corporate media emphasis on stereotypical female roles, resulting in massive pressure on New Zealand women to look young, thin and sexually attractive. Fortunately cosmetic surgery is much less common here than in the US – there aren’t enough Kiwis who can afford it.
• Factory shut-downs and movement of well-paid union and manufacturing jobs to overseas sweat shops.
• Massive household debt (146% of disposable income largely owing to chronic low wages).
• Diets which are excessively dependent on foreign food imports, as opposed to more sustainable reliance on locally and regionally produced food.
• Factory farming of pigs and chickens. Thanks to the high prevalence of battery hen operations (and constant exposure of chickens to feces), New Zealand enjoys the highest per capita incidence of campylobacter infection in the world.

 

photo credit: Mollivan Jon via photopin cc