It denies to us the path which it followed. Spain left behind the Franco years with no recriminations. That is because the Spanish people were determined to reconcile themselves with their past, despite the ravages of the civil war. In all these cases, after great agonising, wise decisions have been made not to revisit the past. The opening up of old wounds, bringing back into debate issues where the true facts have long since been forgotten, serves no purpose.
Chile deserves the same rights as any other country.
But in the weeks since my arrest we have seen only a travesty of the truth. Let us cast our minds back to the chaos that existed in South America in the early 1970s. The freedoms which had been so hard won from colonial domination were being crushed by Soviet-inspired and funded military and political forces. Their clear intention was to deprive the people of their democratic freedoms. As history shows, this is what had happened in the Soviet Union and in Cuba, and continues to be the case in other parts of the world.