Interesting editorial.
Some things to note, things I've picked up on in only a few hours of looking at the Pinochet and pre-Pinochet situation. Prior to Pinochet Chile was a democracy, so how a dictator is credited with paving the way for democracy when in order to do so he had to rule as a dictator after doing away with democracy for 17 years is a little beyond me.
Allende attracted 36% of the vote in a three way election, not a two way election. It's not 51% of the vote, but that's how the system worked and according to the constitution of Chile Allende ended up being the legitimately elected ruler. That's not to say that I believe that there is no situation where a elected govt. can be ousted legitimately, but there is pretty much no situation where I'd accept the alternative as being a military junta of that variety.
The article also drops into the (now familiar) terrritory of comparing Pinochet and Castro as though those were the only real prospects, and also as though condemnation of one implies support for the other. The insistence on the numbers, whilst relevant, indicates to me the need to point out that it wasn't that bad after all, I mean he wasn't Stalin or anything.
It appears that Allende wasn't good for the economy, nor would I expect his kind of reforms to have been. Note though that for all the article's insistence on 'unlawful assault on private property', Pinochet himself never privatised the Allende-nationalised copper industry.
Lastly, the Franco comparision again. Not sure how Franco can lay claim to having paved the way for a democratic nation either, seeing as he had no intention of doing so and had named the King as his successor. Besides, saying that Franco 'resisted Communists' is a gross oversimplification, in fact in the early days of the Spanish Civil War it would be far more accurate to say that Franco resisted anarchists, communists, democrats and just about everybody else who wasn't keen on a military takeover. Soviet money and weapons later became the only real prospect of defeating Nazi and Italian backed troops and the communists became the dominant power in the Republican alliance, some commanders even joined the communist party just to ensure that their troops got supplies and weren't abandoned without reinforcements. Also note that the 'Spanish economic miracle' happened after Franco.
For me at least, this isn't about left and right, this isn't about being economically pure, this is about both sides manning up and admitting that on both sides there have been those that subscribe to their doctrines and still have found the time to abuse human rights and to rule despotically. So if the left keep bringing Pinochet and Franco up, it's probably because the right keeps lazily associating socialist (and 'liberal') policies with the genocides of Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot.