Death and the Maiden
The play Death and the Maiden is set in the country of Chile in a time where the deep wounds of a tyrannical dictatorship were only beginning to heal. For seventeen years, Chile endured the iron-fisted rule of former army commander in chief, Augusto Pinochet Ugarte. By this time, however, the people of Chile were not at all unfamiliar with a corrupt government. The democracy that preceded Pinochet's dictatorship was also wracked with controversy. Salvador Allende Gossens, a committed Marxist, was elected in 1970 by means of a democratic election; however, he only received 36.6% of the Chilean pubic vote. This was only the beginning of the governmental hullabaloo. As time progressed, Allende's government further lost its democratic character by having repeatedly violated the Chilean Constitution. In effect, Salvador Allende's government bordered on a dictatorship as he repeatedly broke his solemn oath to respect the Constitution and the Chilean laws. This was not only obvious to the majority of Chilean citizens, but also to the House of Deputies (the Lower House of the Chilean Congress) and the Chilean Supreme Court. In the momentous Agreement of 23 August 1973, two thirds of the House of Deputies voted to take action against Allen
While the Rettig Commission Report has helped bring healing to Chile, the country still struggled with its past. Old scars were not soon forgotten and the nation remained a divided one. Political torturers walked the streets beside those they persecuted. While many were avenged no court system could solve all of the 200,000 separate cases of torture and death. Government repression was almost inhuman in nature. The types of tyrannical measures used by the military regime included: arbitrary arrest, imprisonment, torture, forced disappearances, summary executions, collective executions, the negation of the right to appeal War Council sentences, homicide, exile, internal exile, abduction, intimidation, attempted homicide, death threats, raids, dismissal from jobs and surveillance. Thousands of people were executed after suspicious disappearances, which often included armed confrontations and torture. Various methods of torture were employed: physical and psychological, electrocution, sexual violence, blows, forced intake of drugs, burning, and immersion in liquids. Some of these arrests were selective and individual in nature, others included mass raids and kidnappings. Some political prisoners were confined to an internal exile in distant and isolated places. Other prisoners were exiled. What the House did not foresee was that following the coup, Pinochet would establish himself as the prime authoritarian of Chile resulting in a full dictatorship. Thousands of people were detained throughout Chile on the day of the coup. The Pinochet's military closed down the National Congress and Constitutional Tribunal; it dec
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1096
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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