Only days ago, in that hotel where somebody, I'm not sure who, pays to see Splash, 5,000 experts on Latin America descended, with all their controversy that nobody north of Tijuana gives a crap about.
This though they should, since everything from Florida's Castro-hating votes for Bush to the future of international human-rights law in the age of wars on terror is linked to what happens there or how we react here—not to mention oil, so much that U.S. military aid is being spent in the Andes to keep pipelines safe.
The event at the Riviera was the Latin American Studies Association's annual fete, with academics, novelists, filmmakers galore—and a judge from Chile named Juan Guzman, who is set to decide any day the fate of former dictator Augusto Pinochet, whose 1973-1990 regime, with its 3,000-plus deaths, remains one of the more notorious examples of state-sponsored terror in modern times. And one of the more drawn-out examples of impunity, after 1998 efforts by a Spanish judge failed to extradite General Pinochet during a visit to London.
A previous attempt by Guzman to try the former dictator in Chile reached the same result.
Now, with Pinochet 88 years old, Guzman was about to evaluate medical exams to decide if the old man was sane enough to be tried in one case involving 19 deaths under Operation Condor, a U.S.-backed anti-Communist effort of the mid-1970s.
Guzman was the event's keynote speaker; I had to find and meet him, if only to see a man on the eve of making history. (History still in the wings as of press time, with the judge still undecided.)
I reached Guzman the next morning, five minutes before his ride to the airport. I had to page him, since there was no mid-60's guy in a "Crazy Girls'' T-shirt and a blue suit jacket—his description. There he was; he had changed the T-shirt for a dark turtleneck. He wore a trim salt-and-pepper beard and seemed surprisingly calm, relaxed even. We sat on the floor in an out-of-the-way hallway at McCarran. His two bodyguards stood at a distance, a reminder of justice's costs elsewhere in the world.
He duly warned me that he could not comment on the details of the case.
Wasn't the timing of the meeting—exposing Guzman to an international stage and public questioning of the case—a bit unfortunate?
"Every moment [in this case] has been dramatic," he answered.
Of course, Guzman's mere presence in the U.S. brought barbs from Pinochet supporters in Chile, with an editorial column in Santiago linking his Las Vegas stay to American liberals—or leftists, the author pointed out in parentheses.
Peter Kornbluh, author of The Pinochet File and researcher at Washington's National Security Archive, said in a phone interview later that resolving Pinochet's case was not only necessary for Chile to heal its wounds, but that it has a message on the international stage as well.
"Particularly during the war on terror," he said, "the Pinochet case stands as an important judicial effort to show that there is no statute of limitations on acts of terrorism."
Guzman said Pinochet's regime contains lessons for societies facing extreme changes in laws and government, such as those seen in the U.S. since September 11.
(As for the war in Iraq, he called it "an affront to international law" and the result of "many errors" by President Bush.)
"Any time a society's institutions break down—whether the pretext is an economic or political crisis—it's not worth it, since the human cost is very high," he said, drawing a deep breath.
He hopes the end result of the Pinochet case is "that justice would serve ... to help put a stop to human-rights violations ... and as a warning for all who would go down that path."