MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Antuco tragedy opens debate on professional army

As blizzards cleared Chile awoke to the full scale of army incompetence that triggered a tragedy in the Andes. Ill-equipped 21 recruits marched to their death, with 24 still missing in the snow-capped Andes.

Scores of soldiers and rescue parties are combing the snow-covered slopes of the Antuco volcano near the border with Argentina searching for 24 missing recruits while grieving and angry families identified the 21 bodies recovered.

The soldiers were members of a battalion of 485 recruits attached to Los Angeles Mountain regiment No. 17, who were overtaken by a powerful snowstorm as they returned to their base 580 kilometres south of Santiago.

Army Commander in Chief General Juan Emilio Cheyre said in a press conference Sunday that searchers would continue working until the bodies of all the missing soldiers were recovered.

President Ricardo Lagos travelled to the area Saturday with his wife, one of his sons and Defence Minister Jaime Ravinet honouring the first 14 soldiers found as "heroes of peace." "The tragedy of Antuco," as the incident is being called, is unprecedented in Chilean military history and has kept the country in anguish and brought severe criticism to bear on the army. Last Friday, Lagos decreed three days of national mourning.

In response to the incident, Cheyre relieved three of his officers of duty on the grounds of "lack of judgment and professional ability," opened a military-justice investigation and initiated internal disciplinary proceedings

Most of the dead and missing were teenage draftees who enlisted just one month ago and went into the mountains on a basic training exercise apparently without gear for the early-winter snowstorm that blinded and disoriented the group.

"I'm convinced they are dead. Only by a miracle will we find any alive" said Army commander in chief General Juan Cheyre who admitted officers' "professional negligence and incompetence" in not taking into account weather forecasts.

The shocking tragedy has reopened the national debate on the military draft, both compulsory and voluntary, and whether the time has arrived for a full professional army.

In Chile the Army is made up of drafted 18/19 year old recruits, mostly voluntary, but with a compulsory percentage until numbers are completed.

However most of the voluntary draftees come from poor families who look to the Armed Forces for a stable job, housing, food, health, education and basically the opportunity of advancing.

In a recent interview General Cheyre said that in 2004 most recruits were voluntary, 64%, anticipating that in 2005 "the percentage would jump to 86%, "because the young generation trust the Army and see in the Army a chance to advance".

A Senator from the ruling coalition, Jaime Naranjo and president of the Human Rights Committee said that this "tragedy creates a completely different situation and will force us to rethink legislation on the matter".

Non government organizations have already begun campaigning for an end to the draft and in favour of a professional army, and have organized for next May 24 a march in downtown Santiago to protest the Antuco tragedy.

The Chilean net of Conscientious Objectors, one of the march organizers claims that the Antuco tragedy is another case of a string of draftee deaths "with no apparent sound explanations" that have been occurring in military installations and which the Army high command has labeled as "accidents".