'The Other 9/11': Progressives Remember Allende's Chile

[Judi Lynn]

"On this day in 1973, Salvador Allende's democratically elected socialist government was overthrown in a military coup led by the U.S.-backed fascist Augusto Pinochet."

KENNY STANCIL

September 11, 2021

As people reflect on the 20th anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks, progressives drew attention to another horrifying event less well-known in the U.S. but referred to elsewhere as "the other 9/11": the bombing of Chile's presidential palace on September 11, 1973 by the nation's armed forces during a right-wing coup supported by Washington and other capitalist regimes.

Salvador Allende, Chile's democratically elected socialist president, died during the assault on La Moneda in Santiago, which brought to power Gen. Augusto Pinochet, whose brutal military junta imposed neoliberalism through deadly force, torture, and the "disappearance" of thousands of leftists. Despite its awareness of Pinochet's human rights abuses, including his execution of political opponents, the U.S. continued to support the pro-market dictator during his bloody, 17-year-long reign.

. . .

Journalist Alan Macleod pointed out that "Chile would be ruled by a gruesome fascist dictatorship for decades, the scars of which are still very fresh."

"But people in the West," MacLeod argued, "are largely insulated from the realities of empire thanks to a pliant media, which never shows you the effect of the bombs, sanctions, coups, etc."

Progressive International noted that "Allende was elected Chile's first socialist president in 1970 as the candidate of Popular Unity, a socialist-communist coalition. He quickly went to work reorganizing the society he inherited, characterized by poverty and confined by the greed of international corporations."

More:
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/09/11/other-911-progressives-remember-allendes-chile

[Scrivener7]

1. Also on 9/11: The Mountain Meadows massacre.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Meadows_Massacre

[gab13by13]

2. I worked in Chile for several months,

in 2002 and 2003. On one occasion our crew was drinking at an outdoor restaurant when a Chilean man started shouting at us, really shouting. My Spanish was limited to cerveza and banios but I did catch him yelling Pinocet several times. The restaurant owners came out to calm the man down, which took a while. We were finished and moved on, we caught up with the man and one of our crew gave him a cigarette and put his arm around him. I can understand why Americans weren't greeted with open arms in Chile.

They also had walls and buildings painted with no war all over Santiago, this was shortly after we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq.

I made friends with many Chileans and made sure to let them know that I didn't vote for Bush. They did a thing with their hand moving it up their throat which signified puking, they did that with Bush.

A 19 year old waitress in a restaurant hang out of mine told me she knew the secret of life. She said, smart people know they are stupid but stupid people don't know they are stupid and Bush is stupid. This was much out of character for her to say that because most of the people there that I worked with were almost shy.

I also got to see the results of Milton Friedman's economic experiment on Chile, it was truly sad, money was no object for them because they were so poor.

Yes Chile had a thriving Socialist economy until Nixon, Kissinger, and our CIA got with Pinocet and wrecked it all.