U.S. Coup in Chile, 1973: The First 9/11
Justice for Chile! No to U.S. Imperialist Aggression and Canada’s Participation in It!
This year is the 50th anniversary of the murderous coup d’état carried out by the U.S. in Chile on September 11, 1973. The coup in Chile unleashed a sustained terrorist attack against the people of that and other South American countries in what became known as Operation Condor.[1] The U.S. imperialists also carried out what became known as dirty wars in Central America and the Caribbean.
On this occasion, CPC(M-L) sends its heartfelt sympathies to all those who suffered such great losses as a result of that brutal act committed under the auspices of the U.S. Fifty years later, the tenacious Chilean people have finally been able to hold to account some of the perpetrators of the crimes committed against them, with some of those culpable being sentenced and restitution ordered to be given by the Chilean state.
On the day of the coup in Chile, Santiago de Chile’s soccer stadium was converted into a holding pen and people were rounded up and massacred. At the Moneda Presidential Palace the constitutional President Salvador Allende was killed. Crimes against the Chilean people extended throughout the years of U.S.-backed dictator General Augusto Pinochet rule and included political assassinations carried out beyond Chile’s borders, even in Washington, DC itself. The military junta led by 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 then U.S. National Security Advisor 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.”
For its part, Canada, far from being a peacekeeper, has consistently appeased or outright supported U.S. imperialism in all of its crimes. This was the case in Chile. The government of Pierre Elliot Trudeau had backed the government of Eduardo Frei, providing various forms of economic aid to Chile after he prevailed in the 1964 election against Allende. When Frei was defeated by Allende in the 1970 presidential election, this aid was cut off and Canadian banks withdrew from Chile. In 1972, Canada joined with the U.S. to vote to cut off funding from the International Monetary Fund. “We shall do all within our power to condemn Chileans to the utmost deprivation and poverty,” said Kissinger of the aim to economically strangle Chile under Allende. After the coup, Canada’s Ambassador to Chile contacted the government of Pierre Elliot Trudeau to inform, “Reprisals and searches have created panic atmosphere affecting particularly expatriates including the riffraff of the Latin American Left to whom Allende gave asylum the country has been on a prolonged political binge under the elected Allende government and the junta has assumed the probably thankless task of sobering Chile up.” The Trudeau government recognized the coup government of Pinochet not long after it seized power.
For the past 50 years, not only the U.S. has refused to condemn its own murderous act in Chile, but it has continued its further descent into ignominy ever since, with more coups and regime change, and brutal wars. The U.S. continues to use the same criminal logic to justify what it did to Chile 50 years ago, whether it be with outright warfare or using unjust and deadly sanctions, brinkmanship and proxy wars to instigate conflict with those countries that seek an independent path.
The demand to hold the U.S. to account for its crimes in Chile is hardly a thing of the past. Putting an end to U.S. crimes against the peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean is a life and death matter in the present. In the last 21 years alone, the U.S. has organized and backed numerous violent coups d’état throughout the region, from which the peoples continue to suffer. There was the short-lived coup against President Hugo Chávez in 2002. There was the 2004 coup against Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, in which Canada was a major instigator. There was the coup against President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras in 2009. There was also the coup attempt the U.S. instigated against President Rafael Correa of Ecuador in 2010 and the coup carried out against President Fernando Lugo of Paraguay in 2012. In 2019, there was the U.S.-backed coup in Bolivia that deposed President Evo Morales. This is say nothing of the more than 60 years of the U.S. genocidal blockade against revolutionary Cuba and more recently the unjust sanctions against Venezuela aimed at regime change. Canada’s role in Venezuela in the recent period has been especially pernicious, with then Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland acting as the handler for Juan Guaidó, the reactionary and bogus pretender to the office of the president, and also spearheading the Lima Group.
Now the U.S. and the Core Group, that includes Canada and many others, are attempting to send in thousands of foreign police to “stabilize” the illegitimate regime of the U.S. puppet Prime Minister Ariel Henry. This is to say nothing of the U.S. crimes in Africa, from West to East Asia, as well as the U.S./NATO proxy war in Ukraine.
On this occasion, CPC(M-L) remembers the victims of the Pinochet regime and Operation Condor. In Chile and around the world, peace- and justice-loving people are marking the anniversary with fierce determination that such crimes must never again be permitted.
The September 11, 1973 U.S.-backed coup d’état in Chile was a heinous act of U.S. state terrorism, which the U.S. is openly telling the entire world it will commit yet again, in the name of high ideals and wielding the threat of nuclear annihilation of humanity. It must not pass!
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.
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