E-mail a friendHeraldo Munoz
airdate December 12, 2008
Ambassador Heraldo Muñoz was Chile's deputy foreign minister and minister secretary-general of government prior to assuming the post of ambassador to the U.N., where he served as president of the Security Council. He's also a visiting professor at several universities and diplomatic academies in the U.S., Europe and Latin America. He's written numerous books, including The Dictator's Shadow, a memoir of life under Pinochet and what it took to overthrow him. Muñoz earned his Ph.D. from the University of Denver.
The ambassador discusses the state of democracy in Latin America. (2:43)
Full interview. (15:15)
Heraldo Munoz
Tavis: Ambassador Heraldo Muñoz serves as Chile's Ambassador to the United Nations where he previously served as president of the U.N. Security Council. He spent much of his early political life in Chile opposing the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet. His new book about Chile is called "The Dictator's Shadow: Life Under Augusto Pinochet." Ambassador Muñoz, nice to have you on the program.
Amb. Hernando Muñoz: Very nice meeting you.
Tavis: It's a pleasure to have you here.
Muñoz: Thank you.
Tavis: Let me start with an unlikely place. You and I were just talking before we came on the air. You happened to go to school with one of our top government officials, Condi Rice.
Muñoz: That's right, yeah. We were classmates at the graduate school of international studies, University of Denver, in the late 1970s. We became very good friends, in fact, because we took a lot of courses together. She was extremely bright and she continues to be.
The interesting thing is that sometimes we talked about my country, about Chile, and I recall a long conversation we had one time where she asked me about the reasons of the collapse of democracy in my country and I told her my views.
I didn't know I was briefing the future Secretary of State of the United States. If I had known that, I would have gone a lot into more details. But we became very good friends and we studied under Joe Korbel, Madeline Albright's father.
Tavis: These circles are too small. So you're there, Condi's there, Madeline Albright's father is teaching both of you.
Muñoz: That's right. The world is small in the end. And then we began to see each other later on. After she and I graduated, I went back to Chile. At the time, there was a dictatorship. I went to continue to fight against the dictatorship because I was very active and I had gone underground after the military coup and I decided to go back, fell in jail. Many things happened that I tell in the book.
But later on, when the story turned successful and we recuperated democracy, I became an authority of my government, Deputy Foreign Minister, and in that capacity, I saw Condi several times when she was before the present post, when she was Director of Soviet Affairs at that time with Bush's father. So I saw her then and, later on, when she was an adviser to then Governor Bush. So life and the world sometimes is small and brings people together.
Tavis: It is small when now she's Secretary of State and you your country's Ambassador to the U.N.
Muñoz: Yes, and I met her these last few years several times.
Tavis: Before I get into the book, talk to me about our government's relationship, or lack thereof, with Latin America. Of course, Latin America is a number of countries and you represent Chile in the U.N. But just talk to me more broadly about the U.S.'s relationship with that part of our hemisphere.
Muñoz: Well, I think that there has been a neglect, if you wish, of Latin America and it's a pity because there's so much that links Latin America with the United States from immigration to drug trafficking to trade to democracy. We are the U.S.'s neighbors and you have to pay attention to your neighbors.
It's been a pity that, in the last few years, there has been a decline of interest in the region while we have been mostly part of the solution, not part of the problem. For instance, the United States has had a surplus in trade with Latin America, meaning that we have been helping to create jobs in the United States because of the increase in trade that has occurred.
We understand why that occurred because, after 9/11, after the terrorist acts in New York and Washington, the U.S. administration, the Bush administration, turned its eyes toward the Middle East and the regions where they perceived there was a terrorist threat and not to Latin America.
So I think there's some catching up to do. President Bush has traveled to Latin America now recently, but perhaps it's a little bit too little too late. Now there's a new administration that things perhaps can be amended.
Tavis: Do you have reason to believe that the relations are going to get better under our new president, Mr. Obama?
Muñoz: Well, let me tell you, the reaction that there has been in Latin America toward President Obama has been extraordinary. I mean, everybody's extremely happy. If he had run for president in Latin America, he would have gotten 90% of the votes.
It is unbelievable, that sense of optimism, that sense of hope, that goes well beyond the United States. It covers the whole world. I have seen colleagues of mine at the United Nations react more or less as I have. For sure, no other election had interests in the world so much and the result being so enthusiastically received.
Tavis: Let me come back to your - thank you for indulging me on those questions about our country. I want to come back to your story now as told in the book.
Help me understand why it is after going to the University of Denver and meeting Condoleezza Rice and being taught by Madeline Albright's father and all that exposure to life here - not that life here is better than life in Chile - but certainly you could have stayed here and not have to live under a dictator or fight to get a dictator out of the presidency. Why as a young man go back to your country? Why engage yourself in such a dangerous undertaking?
Muñoz: Well, I guess, because it was a personal commitment to democracy and to change. I saw the collapse of democracy in my country when the military took over the country and overthrew an elected president, President Salvador Allende, who was a socialist, but a moderate socialist who wanted the country to be more just, more equitable, to the downtrodden and to give opportunities for all Chileans.
And when there was then a military dictatorship, I saw it was my duty to combat it. The day of the coup - I say it in the book - I'm sometimes thinking looking back, we were a bit crazy in those years and the whole world because, in the United States, you had the protest movements against the war, the civil rights movement, and there was a great deal of passion and upheaval.
At that time, I went and picked up some dynamite. I was sort of a paramilitary expert in explosives and I thought that I could do, a 22-year-old, something to protect the constitutional government of my country and with a 22-caliber gun. So it was a strange day where I was willing to put my life on the line because I thought I was defending our constitutional government in a good cause.
So when I went to the United States because of my wife, an American citizen born in Pennsylvania who had accompanied me to Chile, and I sort of dragged her to Chile at such a polarizing period, she asked me to leave Chile and go to the United States for a while and do my [unintelligible], which I did. But once I did that, I thought it was my duty to go back. I had a lot of offers to stay in the United States for perhaps good jobs.
So that dictatorship marked my life and the life of generations, so I thought that I had to go back. My wife asked me not to get involved in politics again, but I didn't follow her advice. I told her that I wouldn't, but then I returned and, three months later, I was picked up, arrested, beaten up, a couple of fingers broken and taken to Major Crimes Tribunal to be processed. But I thought that was what I had to do. It was a question of political commitment.
Finally the story ended up well because we defeated the dictator in a plebiscite in 1988 and when he thought that everybody was going to be with. Nevertheless, we defeated him and those abroad that had supported him because, unfortunately, the United States under the Nixon administration and then the Ford administration embraced Pinochet and that was a very sad period of U.S. foreign policy that I address in the book.
I think any administration ought to reflect that sometimes what it wishes has a danger that it may come true. They wanted a dictatorship. They wanted to unseat Allende and it was like the sorcerer's apprentice when they created this monster who, in the end, ended up in bad terms not only with the Democratic administration with Jimmy Carter, but later on even with Ronald Reagan who did not accept that act in Washington would be unpunished and supported the democratic movement in Chile.
Tavis: Let me offer this as the exit question for our conversation. What is the state, as you see it, of democracy in Latin America now? You talked earlier about the enthusiasm in your region of the world about Barack Obama's election, but there are a lot of people beyond Barack Obama, and even Mr. Obama in certain parts in this campaign, who had comments to make about certain leaders in your part of the world and there have been questions raised, whether it's Chavez or Avo Morales.
I mean, in that region, in that part of the world, there are some concerns that some have about democracy and whether or not it really does have a strong hold in your region of the world.
Muñoz: Yeah. Well, whether we agree or not with Mr. Chavez, he was elected democratically and so was Avo Morales in Bolivia.
Tavis: Exactly.
Muñoz: And the good thing in Latin America is that, after about two decades of dictatorship, we have had democratic elections and presidents succeeding each other not through weapons or coups, but through elections and that is good.
Second, I don't think that - the image sometimes in the United States is that Latin America is going red. No, it's going to all the colors of the rainbow because you have presidents that are conservative like Mr. Calderon in Mexico or a very moderate conservative like Oscar Arias in Costa Rica or you have social Democrats like my own president, Michelle Bachelet, a woman, or President Lula in Brazil.
Latin America is very diverse and democracy, in my view, is very strong in most of Latin America, although we have to be watchful about the tendency that go into the erosion of democracy and understanding that it is not a question of elections only, but about the quality of democracy. Is democracy delivering for the poor? Is democracy delivering for those that have been left behind?
That is a question that we have to make ourselves because, otherwise, then people that don't see the fruits of progress coming to their own houses are going to be skeptical about democracy and they could be then swayed by a demagogue or a populist and that's, I think, a danger looming in the horizon if we don't only take care of democracy, but also of the social needs of the people, health, education and others.
Tavis: His name is Heraldo Muñoz. He is, of course, Chile's Ambassador to the United Nations. His new book is "The Dictator's Shadow, A Political Memoir: Life Under Augusto Pinochet," worth reading. Mr. Ambassador, nice to have you on the program.
Muñoz: Thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: Good to see you.
Muñoz: Thank you very much.
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