To the hell with Pinochet ! PRESS BRITAIN TO EXTRADITE HIM TO BE JUDGED IN SPAIN !
I refer to the several messages that have been appearing in this list about Chile, president Salvador Allende Gossens and the criminal general Augusto Pinochet Ugarte (in Spanish the father's surname comes first).
Chile, the first Chicago-economics lab ********************************************** Louis Proyect is quite right at saying:
"The horrible thing about Chile is not just that it resulted in mass murder, but it also issued in the long wave of capitalist reaction that we are finally beginning to break out of." (you are too much optimistic, Louis! The reaction is just beginning all over the world ! ). Louis continues: "The Chicago School of economics used Chile as a laboratory and the model was applied elsewhere, from post-Solidarity Poland, to Bolivia, to Thatcher's England to Yeltsin's Russia."
The Chicago-economics or the neoliberalism trend, as it is known outside the English-language countries, could be practiced in Chile only under the sponsorship of the military violence and terror. It would so be better to change Friedman's Nobel on Economics by a Peace prize...
I'm going further to write a little about the national security doctrine, that married quite well with neoliberalism in Chile. Nevertheless, it must be stressed that the so called national security dictatorships in South America never were purely military ones: they had solid grounds in the upper bourgeoisie, the urban middle classes, the farmers and, excepting Brazil, in the most part of the Catholic Church. In Chile both the civilian fascist movement Patria y Libertad (fatherland and freedom) and the Democratic Christian party were instrumental in launching the coup. Argentina and Chile adopted neoliberalism, but Brazil preferred instead to follow the path of a pharaonic state capitalism.
US involvement in the bloody putsch against Allende *************************************************************** In 1969, when Salvador Allende was elected President, the front page of Time magazine read: "Marxist threat to Americas". In 1973, when he was deposed, the heading was: "The Bloody Fall".
It is astonishing that doubts on the involvement of the US government in the overthrow of Allende are still found here and there. The US government was mingled up to the neck in the conspiracy (and Nixon and Kissinger too, of course).
Take, for instance, the strike of the truckers, that lasted for more than 2 months and disrupted the Chilean economy. At that time in Chile the trucks were, as a rule, owned by their own drivers. They could not have endured so long if they had not been subsidized to keep themselves out of work. The strike was funded by the CIA and the truckers made no secret of it. By then, Time magazine also reported on the fact. Nevertheless, some months after the coup their leader, Villarín, was banished to Spain (the eternal fate of the petty bourgeoisie under fascism?).
The coup itself seemed to have been timely adjusted with the US government:
the putsch began in the beautiful coastal city of Valparaíso, where the Chilean Navy had concentrated to participate in joint naval maneuvers with a US fleet in the Southern Pacific. Instead of going to the sea, in the early morning of September 11, 1973, the Navy invaded the city and began to imprison and to kill the leftists.
These are just two examples. Peter Kilander remembered the documentary film
"The Battle of Chile", by Jorge Müller Silva. I remember another one: "Missing", by the French author Costa-Gravas, which was based on real facts.
This latter one was aimed to US audiences, since it is centered on the disappearance and the murder by the Chilean military of an young US citizen who was married to a Chilean activist. Some of the characters are US diplomats indifferent to the sort of their fellow citizen ("a radical, isn't him?"). I don't remember if the couple had children, but that was no problem for the fascists: in Argentina, for instance, the military either gave the kids for adoption or made things easier by killing babies.
There also was the famous ITT affair, when the CEO Geneen, probably a psycopath, took himself the mission of toppling Allende. If memory serves me right, the affair was disclosed by the Washington Post and the secret ITT papers were then spread all over the world. As a by-product, the affair ignited the discussion about the improper intervention of powerful MNCs in the functioning of democratic political systems (yes, the elders know that ITT then was a powerful corporation!).
US interventions, Brazil and the national security doctrine ******************************************************************** As all of us know, US interventions against Latin America, both public and private ones (in this latter form the case of Walker in Nicaragua, for instance), are as old as the independence of the continent (independence, did I say?).
Up to 1945, however, almost all of them were circunscribed to Mexico and to the Caribbean and Central America areas and were mainly aimed at defending specific corporate interests. When the Cold War started, US interventionism went definitely down the South American way ---to recall the contemporary Carmen Miranda hit :>) ---and embraced the whole continent. The interventions were not only expanded geographically but became more totalitarian either. Interventionism was then allegedly aimed at the containment of communism, though private interests also benefited from it.
The so called national security doctrine was at first elaborated in the thirties by the Brazilian military to deal with foreign real or fancy menaces against the country. Fascist ones, of course, since Brazil has large populations from German and Italian stocks and, to a lesser extent, Japanese descent. Nevertheless, even in the "German" areas there were clashes between nazis and "reds" (a red was everyone opposed to fascism and to the threat of war). Soviet menaces too, for communism then was a growing force in Brazil.
The communist uprising of the Army and Air Force in 1935 must be inscribed in the roll of the great mistakes of the 3rd. International. It was smashed by the legalist factions and led to the fascist dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas. The national security doctrine soon become a Brazilian state doctrine, a fierce anticommunist one. Notwithstanding this, Brazil and Argentina were the only fascist states in the world to declare war upon the Axis.
The ensuing close collaboration with USA (including an expeditionary military force sent to Italy and put under the allied command) may have transmitted the national security doctrine to the portion of the US military establishment linked to Latin America. One of its chief agents was general Vernon Walters, a liaison officer between the US and Brazilian troops in Italy and a close friend of the most important right wing Brazilian generals
(there were leftist generals too, believe it or not). Walters also was an assistant to Kissinger during his White House reign.
As everybody knows, after 1945 the US foreign policy was centered in defending the "Christian, Western and Free World" (or the Truman Doctrine, March 1947). It was the rationale behind the Marshall Plan. But it was also responsible for magically considering Franco's Spain and Salazar's Portugal "free" countries and to make Japan and Korea "christian" and "western" :>) As to Latin America, the exportation of that hypocrite motto was mixed with the national security doctrine. In short words: the only way to save democracy from communism is the establishment of military dictatorships.
The new wave of national security was attempted in Argentina in 1955 and 1962, but it get strongly rooted in its ancient nest, Brazil, in 1964, with the help of both Kennedy and Johnson administrations (the operation "Brother Sam" was only a chapter in this antidemocratic cooperation). The establishment of a new kind of military dictatorship in Brazil ---the "modernizing" dictatorship forever---- opened the road to the other similar ones in the continent: Argentina in 1966, Bolivia in 1971, Uruguay and Chile in 1973.
Brazil was then used to play the rôle of a second interventionist. In 1965, when US mariners invaded the Dominican Republic, they were overplaced afterwards by joint Pan-American troops (mainly Brazilian) under the command of general Meira Mattos, who also was an author on national security themes. Bolivia was invaded by Brazilian troops in 1971; Uruguay was at the edge of suffering the same fate; and Brazil supplied the Chilean military with intelligence support in 1973. Brazilian military academies were opened to other Latin American military: for instance, a good part of the Somoza's officers studied and trained in Brazil.
Pinochet's only book, "Geopolítica de Chile", does not mention the national security doctrine ---as far as I remind it, since I have not it in my hands just now. Nevertheless, its ideological foundations are the same. One of the best overall studies on the matter is that by the Catholic Belgian priest Joseph Comblin, who was a professor in Brazil, Chile and Harvard: "Le Pouvoir Militaire en Amérique Latine --- l'Idéologie de la Sécurité Nationale", Jean-Pierre Delarge Éditeur, Paris, 1977.
The killing of Letelier *************************** The Pinochet government's assassination of the former Foreign Minister Orlando Letelier in the territory of USA was engineered by DINA (the defunct political police of Chile). There were also killed three US citizens in the blow-up of Letelier's car: a couple of friends and his secretary. Two or three Cubans were hired to do the job and a CIA agent too, named Mike... who? (Lowry?), allegedly a former agent who acted on his own.
The executioners were caught in USA and sent to jail, but their mentor, DINA's boss general Contreras, remained free in Chile, not to mention the great butcher Pinochet. Some years ago Contreras was sent to jail in Chile under a complex agreement with USA, since Contreras blackmailed Pinochet and perhaps Kissinger too. However, the Contreras's secret files were never found and it is said that they are being kept in a safe place abroad. Quite ironically, the left wing has managed to defend Contreras's life, since there are well founded concerns on a fascist attempt to keep him silent...
for eternity.
Chile of today, a full democracy? **************************************** I agree with Emílio that it is quite strange to hear about Chilean refugees in Britain today, as it appeared in BBC. Nevertheless, Chile is far from being a full-fledged bourgeois democracy as compared, for instance, with Argentina or Brazil, which are not pretty models.
The Constitution of the Republic is the neoliberal one decreed by Pinochet himself. Among other things, it provides for a non-elected portion of the Chilean Senate (a very reactionary portion, of course) that hampers any juridical attempt to reform the Constitution. Pinochet warranted immunity to himself and in practice he is out of the jurisdiction of the Chilean courts: a superman above the Law. The Chilean courts have too many conservative judges nominated by the military.
The fascist military still keep an undisguised upper hand hanging over the civilian government (although being the reactionary demo-christian one headed by the junior Frei). In the mass demonstrations last March against Pinochet, when he left the job of commander-in-chief of the Army and became senator for life, the ferocious military repression against the people has shown quite well that the civilian government has no command at all. In June, during the World Soccer Championship in France, the military forbade any meeting of more than four people, even meetings of soccer fans. What about this "democracy", who are the masters in charge of it?
Allende memorabilia ************************** You may find it at the site "Siempre con Allende: 11 de septiembre 1973 / 11 de septiembre 1998. 25o. Aniversario del Golpe Militar contra el Gobierno de la Unidad Popular en Chile"
<http://www.nodo50.org/allende>
As the Chileans say up today: ¡ Se siente, se siente, Allende está presente!
In solidarity, Roberto
1848 / 1998: Proletarier aller Länder, vereinigt euch !
Paix entre nous, guerre aux tyrans (....) Ouvriers, paysans, nous sommes Le grand PARTI DES TRAVAILLEURS (L' Internationale)