Pinochet

“The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas - fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.”                        

-Noam Chomsky

A Troubled Region

Latin America has by no means ever been a peaceful region. At one point or another, it has been fascist, communist, imperialist or somewhere in between. The reason for this disparity of ideals has never quite been pinned down, but it is bound to cause no shortage of trouble. The number of revolutions, civil wars, and coup d’états is shockingly high when you consider the region was colonized only about 500 years ago. One such example is the 1973 Chilean coup, in which the Marxist, democratically elected president, Dr. Salvador Allende was overthrown in favor of a United Sates-backed navy general, Augusto Pinochet.

Seizing Power and foreign involvement

President Allende’s campaign victory -or as Henry Kissinger called it, Chile’s “socialist experiment”- upset a great deal of important people, chief among them President Richard Nixon, but also Henry Kissinger, Margaret Thatcher, Milton Friedmon, and virtually the entirety of the Chilean military high command. To be completely fair, it is true that Allende was a Marxist, both by his own admittance, and as demonstrated by most of his policies. He nationalized the copper industry, socialized medicine, redistributed agricultural land, and basically did everything that would land you right on the CIA’s red list. As if this were not enough, he established close diplomatic ties with Fidel Castro, reduced the size and budget of the army, and refused to cooperate in joint military exercises with the US. In face of this upstarting new president, American foreign policy did what it does best, overthrew him with little regard for the consequences. Preposterous as this may seem, I do not mean allegedly overthrew him, not even probably overthrew him, I mean assuredly, unequivocally overthrew him, as recognized by the US Department of State. Now, it would be unfair to single out the US as the only perpetrator, after all, it was a number of Chilean military officers who executed the final plan. However it may be, the coup was started on early September, and by dawn on the 11th –a date since overshadowed- President Allende lay dead on the halls of his own Presidential Palace, allegedly having tried to defend himself with an engraved AK-47. Now the military Junta was faced with a choice: who to name as Allende’s successor. Eventually they decided on a then relatively unknown general by the name of Augusto Pinochet.