Anniversary of Attack on Twin Towers and Coup d'État in Chile

Justice for the Chilean People!

- Dougal MacDonald -

March in Santiago, September 2017, commemorates 44th anniversary of the coup in Chile.

September 11 marks the 47th anniversary of the U.S. imperialist coup d'état organized in Chile in which the Pinochet regime murdered, tortured, and imprisoned thousands of people. On this occasion, let us remember the victims of the Pinochet regime and Operation Condor that extended these crimes to Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil. To this day, relatives of the victims are fighting to bring the perpetrators of these crimes to justice.[1] 

Today, as the U.S. state cites adherence to "American values" as the criteria to decide who are enemies of the state, it is proper to recall that the crimes committed in Chile and throughout Latin America were against those identified as "enemies of western Christian civilization." Their "crime" was their political beliefs, affiliations or activism. With Santiago's stadium converted into a holding pen, people were rounded up and massacred. At the Moneda Presidential Palace the constitutional President Salvador Allende was murdered. These crimes continued throughout the years of Pinochet's rule and extended far beyond Chile's borders, even to Washington, DC itself. The military junta led by army general Augusto Pinochet, with the full support of the U.S., ran Chile officially and "unofficially" for the next 25 years.

Clearly exposing the U.S. role in the Chilean coup, an October 1970 cable to CIA operatives in Chile from Henry Kissinger's "Track Two" group states: "It is firm and continuing policy that [the democratically elected government of] Allende be overthrown by a coup.... We are to continue to generate maximum pressure toward this end utilizing every appropriate resource. It is imperative that these actions be implemented clandestinely and securely so that the USG [United States Government] and American hands be well hidden." In 2007, it was revealed that millions of dollars that Pinochet stole from the Chilean people had been held in a secret account in the Bush-connected Riggs Bank in Washington, DC since 1994, with full knowledge of U.S. banking officials. No U.S. President has apologized for U.S. backing of Pinochet's crimes and U.S. involvement in the 1973 coup.

Prior to the coup in Chile, the U.S. already had a long and bloody history of organizing and backing violent coups d'état in Latin America; for example, Guatemala, Brazil, Nicaragua and Panama to name only a few. With the 1823 Monroe Doctrine, the U.S. served notice that it claimed Latin America for itself. Almost immediately, the U.S. grabbed one-third of Mexico through military force. Since the 1890s, when it achieved regional supremacy over Spain and Britain, the U.S. has forcibly intervened in Latin America over 50 times. A significant role in these interventions, including Operation Condor, has been played by the Latin American Anti-Communist Confederation which was founded in 1972 by Guatemalan death squad leader Mario Sandoval Alarcón as the Latin American branch of the World Anti-Communist League, co-founded in Taiwan in 1966 by Nazi war criminals and other fascists.

Forty-seven years after the coup in Chile, the U.S. continues to organize and back violent coups d'état, as it did in Honduras in 2009. The U.S. continues to form aggressive alliances, build military bases in client states such as Colombia, treat surrounding bodies of water as if they were American lakes, and carry out subversive actions against those democratically elected governments of Latin American countries such as Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and Nicaragua that exercise the right to choose their own political system, free of U.S. interference. Two major channels for this subversion through which millions of dollars are supplied to U.S.-supported political groups in Latin American countries are USAID and the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy. The secret dirty wars that the U.S. previously conducted in the Southern Cone and Central America in collusion with local military forces have now become open.

Of growing concern is the pernicious role that the Trudeau government is playing in the name of promoting "prosperity and security" in the hemisphere. As the countries of the Americas work to defend their sovereignty and establish alternatives to an economic model which devastates them, the Trudeau government touts its role in the Organization of American States, infamous for perpetrating U.S. coups d'état and the dirty wars of the 1960s, '70s and '80s and for using its so-called Inter-American Democratic Charter as a tool for more of the same in the 21st century.

Trudeau's pronouncements about so-called democracy in Latin America cast aspersions on Venezuela and other countries which are defending their right to follow their own paths to development. This reveals the Trudeau government's agenda to carry on interfering in the internal affairs of the countries of Latin America and what "advances of democracy" it has in mind. 

Needless to say, the peoples of the Americas are not passive, waiting for the kind of democracy the Trudeau government advocates. Their struggle for freedom is written in their blood and nothing confirms this more than the struggle for justice for the crimes committed by the U.S.-installed Pinochet dictatorship and the dirty wars which still carry on in the name of free trade, democracy, the war on drugs, etc.

Families and friends continue to look for the disappeared and to demand justice for what happened to them. Incredibly, political prisoners continue to linger in jail while virtually none of those responsible for human rights violations have been prosecuted for their crimes. Pinochet himself, protected by the imperialists, eluded justice and died without being punished for his crimes.

On this occasion, we express our deepest sympathies to the heroic Chilean people and to the families and friends of all those killed and disappeared in the infamous coup and subsequent regime. We hail the resolute struggle of the Chilean people to achieve justice for the crimes committed by the Pinochet regime and its U.S. patrons. The September 11, 1973 U.S.-backed coup d'état in Chile, an act of state terrorism, exposed the true character of U.S. imperialism, which the people of the world will never forget.

Note

1. Operation Condor was a campaign of political assassination and repression officially created in 1975 in Santiago, Chile by the ruling circles of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil to eradicate socialist and communist influence and ideas and to eliminate opposition movements against the participating governments. The U.S. first proposed the plan for Operation Condor in 1968, calling for "the coordinated employment of internal security forces within and among Latin American countries." Condor was responsible for a minimum of 60,000 deaths, 30,000 "desaparecidos," and 400,000 incarcerated.

(Photos: elderchoalapz, Chilean Museum of Memory and Human Rights)

This article was published in

Volume 50 Number 34 - September 12, 2020

Article Link:
Anniversary of Attack on Twin Towers and Coup d'État in Chile: Justice for the Chilean People! - Dougal MacDonald

    

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