50th Anniversary of U.S. Coup in Chile

Justice for Chile and the Chilean People!

Moneda Presidential Palace, September 11, 1973

September 11 of this year marks the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état carried out by the U.S. in Chile. Events are taking place on this anniversary to commemorate all those who suffered during the coup and to hold the U.S. to account, and CPC(M-L) calls on everyone to join in to make them a success.

On September 11, 1973, troops under the command of General Augusto Pinochet seized power. Moneda Presidential Palace was bombed and the constitutional President Salvador Allende was assassinated. A military junta was established and in the first months after the coup, thousands were killed or disappeared. The National Stadium of Chile was turned into a mass detention site, where 40,000 political prisoners were detained and tortured. In the first three years after the coup, some 130,000 people were arrested. An estimated 200,000 people are thought to have fled the country during the dictatorship, which lasted until 1990.

Pictures of victims of the Pinochet coup cover walls in the Museum of Memory and Human Rights in Santiago Chile.

The 1973 coup in Chile unleashed a sustained campaign of U.S. state terrorism against the people of Chile and other South American countries that became known as Operation Condor. This 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.” Operation Condor was responsible for at least 60,000 deaths, 30,000 “desaparecidos,” and 400,000 incarcerated. Operation Condor led to what became known as dirty wars in Central America and the Caribbean.

Salvador Allende had run for president of Chile against Eduadro Frei in 1964 and again in November 1970 when he prevailed. His candidacy was opposed by the U.S. because Allende, an avowed socialist, sought to put the natural wealth and economy of Chile at the disposal of the people and their needs, not private foreign interests. On June 27, 1970, Henry Kissinger, as National Security Advisor in the Nixon administration, put the matter of Chile to the Forty Committee, the interagency body he headed that was responsible for approving CIA covert operations. “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people,” he said.

The U.S. State Department had a plan, called Track I, for electoral manoevres to block Allende from assuming office after winning the election. Kissinger and the CIA also had Track II, aimed at finding military officers who would support a coup, which the CIA could then back. An October 1970 cable from the Track II group to CIA operatives in Chile stated, “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.”

After Allende’s election, the U.S. and others sought to economically strangle Chile. This was articulated by the then U.S. Ambassador to Chile, who reported to Kissinger that he had sent a cable to outgoing President Frei, trying to persuade him to join a coup. “Not a nut or bolt shall reach Chile under Allende. Once Allende comes to power we shall do all within our power to condemn Chile and all Chileans to utmost deprivation and poverty,” Korry had written to Frei.

The Chilean people have been fighting to hold to account those responsible for the coup for the past 50 years, while more and more information has come to light making clear U.S. involvement and responsibility for the coup. Daniela Serrano and Luis Cuello, two deputies of the Chilean Communist Party, on September 8 handed over a letter addressed to U.S. President Joe Biden to the U.S. Ambassador to Chile, Bernadette Meehan, requesting the creation of a fund for the victims of the dictatorship.

Demonstration in Santiago, Chile, September 8, 2013, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the coup.

“The United States has the obligation to grant reparations to Chile,” Congressman Cuello stated, and added any apology for the intervention and interference must be accompanied by economic compensation. He warned that violating international law cannot go unpunished and said he hoped that all political sectors would support this proposal. Congresswoman Serrano, recalled that recently declassified files showed how the U.S. torpedoed Salvador Allende´s democratically elected government. It has become clear that there was foreign interference here and we strongly believe that the United States should compensate those who were victims of state terrorism, she said.

On August 30, the Chilean government launched the National Search Plan for the Detainees Disappeared. It will start by integrating the work carried out by truth commissions, courts of justice, victims’ relatives and previous governments. During a meeting with the foreign press, Minister of Justice Luis Cordero explained that the objective is to know the conditions and circumstances in which the detentions and forced disappearances occurred during the Pinochet dictatorship. Minister Cordero affirmed that the plan is a form of reparation not only to the victims’ families, but also to society. A year before, on September 11, 2022, Chile’s President Gabriel Boric stated that the whereabouts of 1,192 disappeared detainees of the Pinochet dictatorship were still unknown.

On August 29, the Chilean Supreme Court handed down a final sentence for the kidnapping of two of President Allende’s personal escorts and the murder of nine others during the coup. It overturned the ruling of the Court of Appeals and posthumously sentenced Air Force General Vicente Rodríguez Bustos who passed away in September 2020. The Supreme Court also ordered the Chilean state to provide financial compensation to the victims’ direct relatives in amounts ranging from USD$5,825 to USD$93,200.

Canada had a role in putting economic pressure on the Allende government and then supported the military junta after the coup. 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 1970, this aid was cut off and Canadian banks withdrew from Chile. In 1972, Canada followed the U.S. lead to vote to cut off funding from the International Monetary Fund.

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, despite being exhorted by various Canadian organizations not to do so.

The Canadian government was put under sustained pressure by the Canadian people to provide refuge for those fleeing the military junta in Chile. Historian Jan Raska points out that anti-communist considerations were first and foremost for the Canadian government, not humanitarianism:

“Initially, Canadian officials were cautious to resettle Chilean refugees in Canada. Worried about the possible leftist sympathies of the Chilean refugees, Canadian officials provided little government planning and assistance to individuals fleeing the repressive right-wing military regime. Aware of American support for the new Pinochet government and uncertain about the political affiliation of the aforementioned refugees, the Canadian government acted slowly for nearly a year before implementing rigid security screening to prevent communist sympathizers from entering Canada.

“Soon, the Canadian government was criticized for its inaction in bringing Chilean refugees to Canada. With heightened public awareness and lobbying efforts on the part of the UNHCR, Amnesty International, Canadian churches, and voluntary service organizations, the federal government loosened selection criteria and exclusionary measures to permit nearly 7,000 refugees from Chile to enter Canada.”

Today, some 40,000 people of Chilean descent live in Canada and on this occasion, CPC(M-L) stands with them to remember the victims of the Pinochet regime and Operation Condor. It joins all peace- and justice-loving people in Chile and around the world to demand that such crimes must never again be permitted.

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