Chile coup: 40 years ago I watched Pinochet crush a democratic dream
Chile coup: 40 years ago I watched Pinochet crush a democratic dream
How the drama and repression developed as a US-backed coup overthrew Allende's government on 11 September 1973
Hugh O'Shaughnessy
The Observer, Saturday 7 September 2013 12.52 EDT
Few foreign reporters were left in Santiago on the spring morning of Tuesday 11 September 1973 when Augusto Pinochet, head of the army, was pulling off his trick.
The previous Saturday he had finally joined in preparations for the long brewing coup d'état against a fairly elected government and, only three days later, was revealing his capacity for terrorism, torture and treason with a foreign power. Only now was he throwing in his lot with a US government that detested the idealistic but ramshackle coalition of six parties headed by Dr Salvador Allende, the country doctor and upstanding freemason who was set on introducing elements of social democracy in a country long organised for the benefit of the landowners, industrialists and money men.
For months the original plotters had kept Pinochet at a distance, judging him too loyal to the elected and, as the results of the recent local elections showed, increasingly popular Allende, and too loyal to the constitution to be allowed into the conspiracy.
Most foreign journalists had given up and left Chile after weeks of waiting, many returning from deprived and poor Santiago proud but provincial to bustling Buenos Aires and their homes across the Andes. The Washington Post had a correspondent, but not the New York Times; Newsweek, but not Time magazine.
More:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/07/chile-coup-pinochet-allende
ForgoTheConsequence
(4,869 posts)And for all the neoconservative-underground posters that accuse me of being a "blame america first" type. Shit like this is why a good chunk of the world doesn't trust us. It's also why it's difficult to take our government at it's word when we say our goal is to promote democracy around the world. Sure we want democracy, until you elect someone that doesn't serve the interests of the United States government.
busterbrown
(8,515 posts)they stand for.. In the meantime more steps need to be taken by Progressives to out the underground money laundering operation of the MIC..
Our goal by the 1% is no longer to promote Democracy but rather to promote profit opportunities by exploiting natural resources of economically distressed Countries..
By the way if you have not seen the oscar winner film NO based on the advertising campaign to defeat Pinochet
in the i988 election, you are missing something great..
Judi Lynn
(160,644 posts)~snip~
On 21 September 1970, Allende had been declared victor of clean elections, but before he took over the presidency, after a fruitless effort by Chilean conservatives and their US allies to have the victory declared unconstitutional, Edward Korry, the US ambassador in Santiago, reported to Henry Kissinger, the foreign strategist of President Richard Nixon: "Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and the Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty."
A few days earlier Richard Helms, director of the CIA, had scribbled notes on a meeting in Washington with Nixon, Kissinger and John Mitchell, the US attorney general, where the president demanded a coup. They read: "One in 10 chance perhaps, but save Chile! /worth spending /not concerned risks involved /no involvement of embassy /$10,000,000 available, more if necessary/ best men we have/ game plan/ make the economy scream /48 hours for plan of action."
After Allende's enemies finally claimed their victory against him on 11 September, Chileans protected themselves as best they could while Pinochet and his cohorts, well favoured now by Washington, turned to making themselves fortunes from the privatisation of public services and, quietly, from the trade in cocaine from Bolivia which the US never seemed to want to criticise or attack.
So confident was Pinochet in his protectors in "the free world" that on 17 September 1976 he ordered the killing of Orlando Letelier, Allende's former defence minister, with a bomb planted in his car in Sheridan Circle in the diplomatic heart of Washington itself. Such an atrocity, had it been committed by any Arab or Iranian, or indeed a Muslim of any persuasion, would have brought down instant punishment, or even war. But Pinochet was in no danger. After all, he had been Nixon's man all along.
Sad.