US: Chile dealt better with Pinochet’s death than Spain with Franco’s
In its on-going coverage of the State Department cables made available by Wikileaks, El País has published a report from the US ambassador in Santiago sent after the death in 2006 of dictator Augusto Pinochet, whose heading made a tongue-in-cheek reference to Chevy Chase’s famous running gag on Saturday Night Live‘s Weekend Update (video here). The US ambassador concluded that Chile, unlike Spain, was happy to leave its past behind:
After the 1975 death of Spanish dictator Francisco Franco, “Saturday Night Live’s” Chevy Chase would regularly open his faux newscast with the observation that “Francisco Franco is still dead.” In Chile, former dictator Augusto Pinochet, who died December 10, 2006, not only remains that way, he seems to almost have never existed.
More here.
