| Member
Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: St. Louis
Posts: 84
| Sept. 11, 1973
"Chile's president, Salvador Allende, killed in a military coup."
YES.
Salvador Allende was too popular for his own good. He committed the unprecedented heresy of coming to power in a democratic election as an avowed Marxist, and of striking an independent course for his nation. A CIA study in 1970 noted that the "U.S. has no vital national interests within Chile" and that Allende's election would not alter "the world military balance of power." But the Agency warned that success by Allende would pose the threat of a good example, encouraging other countries to follow the same path.
A CIA-sponsored anti-communist scare campaign helped prevent an Allende victory in the 1964 elections. In 1970, he won a plurality of 37 percent, in a three-way split, and took power with the blessings of the defeated president, Eduardo Frei. The U.S. immediately imposed a credit embargo and other measures to "make the economy scream," as CIA director Richard Helms advised in a memo. U.S. copper interests, whose Chilean holdings were nationalized, and the multinational ITT cooperated in a broad campaign to destabilize Chile. As it had since 1964, the CIA continued to plant anti-Allende scare stories through paid assets in the Chilean press.
Nixon's national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, was highly devoted to the effort. Newly released documents cited by Christopher Hitchens establish Kissinger's role in the 1970 assassination of the commander-in-chief of the Chilean army, Rene Schneider, for the crime of supporting the democracy. The U.S. government hoped for a successor who could get over "the apolitical, constitutional-oriented inertia of the Chilean military" (CIA memo, Blum, 210) and stage a coup d'etat against Allende. Incredibly, while leading a trade boycott on Chile, the U.S. increased military aid to the country, as a means of penetrating the army. Fearing his own officers, Allende was forced to accept this offer.
In March 1973, despite a sabotage campaign, his United People party captured an all-time high of 44 percent in parliamentary elections. The presidential palace was attacked by military elements loyal to a right-wing party in June. Fatefully, Allende refused calls from within his party to distribute arms among the people. On Sept. 11, the presidential palace was occupied by troops under the command of General Augusto Pinochet, with U.S. backing. Allende was taken away and shot to death.
Pinochet's forces rounded up thousands of Allende loyalists in Santiago Stadium and instituted a reign of torture, execution and assassination that cost more than 3,000 lives, according to present estimates. Subversive books were burned and women were made to stop wearing pants. Economists of the Chicago School were called in to guide the country on tight monetarist reins that foreshadowed the policies of Margaret Thatcher (a staunch defender of Pinochet to this day). Everything was re-privatized, down to the government pension plans, unions were crushed and the general population further impoverished. But Chile was restored as an "open market," with high profits for multinational corporations. By meeting all debt payments and IMF requirements, Chile qualified for regular praise as an "economic miracle" in the pages of the New York Times. By 1990, when democracy was restored, the Times was refering to the dictator as "President Pinochet," now "seeking a fourth term."
Sept. 11, 1973, raises at least three questions that matter today:
1) The CIA has often destabilized societies and overthrown legitimate governments, but the bloody coup of Sept. 11, 1973 has gone down as the textbook case. Chile became the spearhead for Operation Condor, a CIA-directed alliance of six South American dictatorships, who agreed to track down and extradite each others' dissidents. Geostrategists have blithely recommended the "Pinochet Solution" as an option for dealing with economic instability and uppity populations in Iran, Russia, Brazil... and why not the United States itself? Is it far-fetched that those who live and prosper from applying terror to foreign countries will one day use the same means on their own people?
Click here to read how the U.S. government and military have worked for 35 years in developing an apparatus for domestic military rule that can be activated at any time, without need of a formal announcement.
2) In a now famous comment on Allende at a 1970 White House meeting, Kissinger made no secret of his contempt for democracy: "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people" (Marchetti, 48). Had Allende been a cruel and unpopular tyrant, he might have won the CIA's favor. His sin was that he was a democrat, and that he hoped to do good for his people. Whether or not his politics would have worked, absent the foreign disruption, is another question. He did not deprive Chileans of their right to remove him from office in an election, and this made him vulnerable to removal by a foreign power. The elected government of Jacobo Arbenz, in Guatemala, suffered the same fate in 1954, when it was overthrown in a coup directed by the CIA. This initiated a series of American-armed military regimes that killed hundreds of thousands of Guatemalans. From the case of Arbenz, Fidel Castro said he learned that allowing democratic government is futile, if the United States is determined to destroy it. Is Castro paranoid? What would have happened to the Cuban Revolution, had Castro not turned Cuba into a dictatorship? Would he have survived, only to be ousted in a fair and democratic election? Or would he have been done in, like Allende?
Click here and search the NARCONEWS site for items about the most recent U.S. project to destroy democracy in Latin America, the April 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela. It failed, unlike the Pinochet coup, and it was condemned by a majority of Latin American nations. Perhaps times are changing, and the day will come when Castro can finally loosen up his act.
3) General Pinochet endured a surprise house arrest in Britain in 1997, but finally escaped punishment. The most culpable living perpetrator on the American side, Kissinger, is celebrated as a foreign policy genius on TV and still serves as a top-level private adviser to the present administration, NATO, and foreign powers including China. The day after the attacks on New York and Washington, the man behind the bombing of Cambodia and the rape of East Timor issued a barely disguised call for a world war on all enemies. He wrote, "any government that shelters groups capable of this kind of attack, whether or not they can be shown to have been involved in this attack, must pay an exorbitant price" (Washington Post, Sept. 12, 2001, italics mine). The example of Chile shows that the U.S. government shelters groups capable of massive terrorist attacks, and that one of their masterminds is Henry Kissinger. What price should this government pay?
Reading
William Blum, Killing Hope. U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, 1995.
Edward Boorstein, Allende's Chile. An Inside View, New York, 1977.
Christopher Hitchens, "The Case Against Henry Kissinger," Harper's, June-July 2001, also available as a book.
Victor Marchetti and John Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, New York, 1974. |
Linear Mode
