Tant: New documents on U.S. role in Chile sadly unsurprising
Tant: New documents on U.S. role in Chile sadly unsurprising
By Ed Tant
published Saturday, October 17, 20150 comments
“We are five thousand here in this little part of the city. We are five thousand. How many more will there be?” asked martyred Chilean poet, singer and dissident Victor Jara in verses that he wrote while imprisoned with thousands of other Chileans in a Santiago sports stadium during the bloody military coup that began in his country on Sept. 11, 1973.
Jara was beaten, tortured and murdered by agents of the U.S.-backed regime of dictator Augusto Pinochet. The armed forces led by General Pinochet had toppled the democratically elected socialist government of President Salvador Allende, who died in the coup, and had begun a reign of terror against foes of the newly installed dictatorship in a country that had for decades been a rare stable democracy in South America.
“How terrible is the face of fascism,” Jara wrote in the prison poem that would be the last writing by the protest singer. “The military carry out their plans with precision. They care for nothing. Blood is a medal for them. Slaughter is their badge of heroism.”
Newly declassified State Department records released earlier this month show that fascism was indeed afoot during the long and savage dictatorship of Pinochet and that the United States was complicit in the coup. Secretary of State John Kerry turned over the documents during a recent trip to Chile. In a stunning revelation, the newly released documents quoted Kerry’s State Department predecessor during the Reagan administration, Secretary of State George Shultz, as saying that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had “convincing evidence” that Pinochet ordered a car-bombing and double murder that shook Washington’s posh Embassy Row in 1976.
Former Chilean diplomat Orlando Letelier, a longtime critic of Pinochet’s iron-fisted rule, was killed in the blast, along with his young American colleague, Ronni Mofitt. In spite of the terrorism unleashed on the streets of Washington by the Chilean dictatorship, the United States continued to have cozy relationships with Chile’s military junta that was aided and abetted by American business, political and military interests.
More:
http://onlineathens.com/opinion/2015-10-17/tant-new-documents-us-role-chile-sadly-unsurprising
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