16 – Chilean 9/11 military coup

This is just a simplified guide. The questions are not central to the discussion in this class, but rather basic starting points. Prof. Jorge Majfud

1. Who was Salvador Allende?
2. How and who ended Chilean democracy in 1973?
3. What came next?

In Allende’s Chile, the «economic crisis» was fabricated by companies and from abroad, with credit strangulation, etc. Even so, there was no depression or significant recession, as you can see in the numbers (see the chart I generated with Google’s GDP graph). How can a president «destroy» an economy in just two years? There were a lot of social problems, basically because of the confrontation between the oligarchy (the traditional country’s owner, the exporter sector, with the military as their protectors) and the rest of the marginalized population. 

The following facts were labeled «conspiracy theories» in the 1970s and 1980s. They do not anymore (because they do not matter anymore). 

So, let us see now the facts.

Very briefly, this case is known as “make the economy scream”:

«On September 12, eight days after Allende’s election, Kissinger initiated a telephone discussion with CIA director Richard Helm about a preemptive coup in Chile. «We will not let Chile go down the drain,» Kissinger declared. «I am with you,» Helms responded. Their conversation took place three days before President Nixon, in a 15-minute meeting that included Kissinger, ordered the CIA to «make the economy scream» and named Kissinger as the supervisor of the covert efforts to keep Allende from being inaugurated. Since the Kissinger/Helms «telcon» was not known to the Church Committee, the Senate report on U.S. intervention in Chile and subsequent histories date the initiation of U.S. efforts to sponsor regime change in Chile to the September 15 meeting. «(http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB437/ )

Right after the coup, Henry Kissinger denied any involvement in the TV (see YouTube video

watch at 5.30’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z6dRvmV2tU) but he was present in many meetings since years before (even before Allende won the election) to plot against democracy (not to mention that Allende had lost the previous election when the US government funded with millions of dollars the other candidate).

Now, see what Commission 40, did before Allende finally won the election:

docs:  http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/20001113/700909.pdf  — Inv doc http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/docs/doc05.pdf )  includes very well-known names, plus many cables, etc. There, we can read now that they invested hard in destabilizing Chile, first economically and politically, then backing a bloody military coup that left thousands of tortured, disappeared, and killed people, plus many more exiled.

On the other hand, there were many other successful examples in Latin America and many other European countries when investing in the poor through many social plans that were expensive at the beginning but economically and socially profitable (higher skill workers, less violence, etc.) in the long term –not to mention the apparent case of four-term President F. D. Roosevelt after the worst depression in the US, with the New Deal and many social programs like the SS, revival of the unions, government investment on many works and industries, etc., because of what he was accused of being socialist)

A little more about Chile: here a chart I designed to compare Chile vs Cuba and «the economic crisis» of Allende vs «the economic success» of Pinochet and the last president of Chile, Michelle Bachelet (her father was a victim of Pinochet) Obviously Cuba was not an economic model of “booming” (had not opportunity to trade with the major economic world power and was subsidized by the Soviets until 1989, and even so it grew in terms of GDP even more than Pinochet’s Chile and saying that we have to recognize that Chile’s economy under Pinochet did much better than any other right-wing-capitalist dictatorship at the time. Of course, it was better for some, but not everyone; there were slumps in Santiago and many poor peasants in the countryside in a very rich country. Today, it is quite a different story).

See historical Latin American GDP_1_.ppsx 

And, of course, some people loved and still love Pinochet the same way some people still love Hitler (he fixed Germany’s economy), Mussolini, Stalin (he made poor Russia a superpower), Franco, Mao Zedong (he made poor China ever poorer, but he is an unteachable figure in today’s China), Osama B.L., Timothy’s McVeigh, so on and so forth. Unfortunately, nothing new.

A few links to documents about this topic:

US Freedom of Information Act.

DofS on Horman http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/19991008/

«State Department Release on Chile Shows Suspicions of CIA Involvement in Charles Horman «Missing» Case»  http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/19991008/index.html 

  

1964 “permitting plausible denial” http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/20040925/

Edward Korry / Donald Kendall, chairman of PepsiCo

http://www.theguardian.com/business/1998/nov/08/observerbusiness.theobserver

Pinochet’s Secret Death Camps

Margaret Thatcher protects Augusto Pinochet  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7j3N5cCyf8

Isabel Allende Interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiXHFk3dNcY (The House of The Spirits 4’)

The House of The Spirits: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTJ3pUXoCcY

Pinochet’s time https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr2Sy0Uf-Ig

Denial Kissinger – watch 5.30’ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1z6dRvmV2tU

40 Commission  http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/20001113/700909.pdf

Inv doc http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/docs/doc05.pdf

Orlando Letelier https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K31QXHHKdjE

Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents Relating to the Military Coup, September 11, 1973

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/n saebb8i.htm

………

Memorandum for the Record, Subject: Minutes of the 40 

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20001113/700909.pdf

Pag 1 >> , Pag. 2 >>

…………

 CIA, Cable Transmissions on Coup Plotting, October 18, 1970

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB8/docs/doc27.pdf

……….

Memorandum for the Record, Subject: Minutes of the 40 

http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20001113/700909.pdf

 

Prof. John Dinges on 9/11, 1973 Chilean coup d’état

The following pages are not required reading for this course but are intended to provide a different perspective on little-known and often unknown facts, documented by primary sources.

1970. Nixon decides that Chileans voted wrong

Washington DC. September 4, 1970—Ambassador Edward Korry sends a cable to Washington reporting that “Chile has peacefully voted for a Marxist-Leninist government, becoming the first nation to freely and consciously choose this option… we have suffered a miserable defeat.” The next day, Saturday the 5th, President Nixon orders CIA Director Richard Helms to prevent the elected president of Chile from assuming power in November. At the National Security Council meeting on Tuesday the 8th, Ambassador Edward Korry’s alarming report is discussed. There are two solutions: Plan A and Plan B (Track I and II). The first aims to prevent Allende from taking office by convincing the Chilean Congress to break a long tradition in that country and not confirm the election winner. Plan B refers to a military coup and will be set in motion just days later, when President Nixon approves it on September 15.

Present at the secret meeting on September 8 are National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, Attorney General John Newton Mitchell, Admiral Moorer, Mr. William McAfee, Mr. Packard, and CIA Director Richard Helms, among others.[1] The Committee 40, created by President Nixon for this purpose, had requested that both the CIA and the Embassy in Santiago do everything possible to get rid of Dr. Allende. According to Henry Kissinger, Allende, like Árbenz in Guatemala two decades earlier, posed a greater danger than Fidel Castro because he had come to power through elections, which would serve as an example not only for other countries in the region but even for Europe, as was the imminent case of Italy.

Richard Helms favors a swift coup d’état. Mr. Packard is optimistic that the Chilean army will easily decide to carry out a coup. Mr. Johnson and Mr. Meyers argue that if the coup is immediate, Allende’s supporters could take to the streets in support of their leader, so some psychological work is advisable beforehand. In conclusion, Committee 40 decides to order the Embassy in Santiago to study “coldly” the two options: 1) a coup d’état in Chile with U.S. assistance and 2) organizing and aiding an opposition to Allende’s government. On October 16, 1970, the CIA insists: “It is uncompromisingly our purpose that Allende be overthrown by a coup d’état… The means will include propaganda, covert operations, disinformation, personal contacts, or anything else that comes to mind.” From Langley, Virginia, the CIA’s lead agent for Chile, David Atlee Phillips orders the intensification of efforts to create an environment of social and economic instability, to strengthen the Chilean army’s conviction to carry out the coup d’état “and to inform them that the U.S. government wants a military solution, which will be supported before and after it is achieved.”

On September 12, Kissinger informs Richard Helms of the decision to prevent Allende from assuming office at any cost. Later, Kissinger, with his classic arrogance, confirms the foundational philosophy of the project: “I don’t see why we should stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.” The CIA Director, Richard Helms, writes to Kissinger with the solution, which, by the way, is not at all creative: “A sudden economic disaster will be the logical pretext to justify military action.” Three days later, on Tuesday the 15th, in a secret meeting with Kissinger, Helms takes note of President Nixon‘s words. In hurried handwriting, he writes in verse: “any expense is worth it / no risk that should worry us / keep the embassy out of it / ten million dollars or more if necessary / we’ll make the Chilean economy scream in pain.” On November 25, Henry Kissinger sends a memorandum to President Nixon regarding actions in Chile titled “Covert Action in Chile,” summarizing the strategy to follow: “1) Fracture Allende’s coalition; 2) Maintain and expand contacts with the Chilean military; 3) Provide aid to non-Marxist groups; 4) Increase the visibility of newspapers and media opposed to Allende; 5) Support media like [censored] to fabricate that Cuba and the Soviets are behind his government. The Committee has approved the CIA’s operational measures and the necessary budget.”

Two months later, Nixon confirms the hegemonic power’s fear of the dangers of setting a bad example among Latin American natives. In the November 6 Security Council meeting, after discussing how to manipulate the price of copper, the president says: “It doesn’t matter what the truly democratic countries of Latin America have to say. The game is in Argentina and Brazil“, two friendly dictatorships. “I will never agree to reducing support for Latin American armies. They are centers of power subject to our influence. The others, the intellectuals, are not subject to our influence… Our primary concern in Chile is the prospect of Allende consolidating and projecting his success to the rest of the world… We must be kind and very proper while sending them a clear message”. At the same time that the decision is made to strangle Chile’s economy, Nixon orders investing more money (“put in more money”) in the dictatorships of Argentina and Brazil. At ten in the morning, as if to leave no doubt about the health of the Monroe Doctrine and the racial sensitivity that permeates Washington’s international policy like an old ghost, Nixon declares: “Latin America is not Europe, with Tito and Ceausescu, with whom we have no choice but to get along and where no change is possible… If there is any way to harm Chile, whether by using the forces of our government or through private businesses… Let there be no impression in Latin America that they can get away with it”. Nixon only errs in his final conclusion, when he orders that the new Chilean president be privately informed of Washington’s displeasure: “Allende will not change except in his own interest”, he says, and the meeting adjourns.

But the massive conspiracy that would culminate in the 1973 coup d’état had not begun in Washington but, as so many times before, in the boardrooms of powerful U.S. companies operating in Chile, in the desperate call for U.S. intervention by the criollo elite, and in the bedrooms of the old ruling class. Ambassador Edward Korry had not only discussed with the ambassador of the Brazilian dictatorship, Antonio Cândido da Câmara Canto, the plan to abort Allende’s inauguration as president; he had also met several times with the owner of the newspaper El Mercurio, Agustín Edwards Eastman, a longtime CIA beneficiary and personal friend of the ambassador, requesting military intervention in Chile.He had also received calls from the manager of the American mega telecommunications company ITT and from the manager of Pepsi Cola, Donald Kendall, concerned that the policies of the new government might affect their sales. Shortly after, Kendall visited Richard Nixon at the White House. (They are old acquaintances. When Nixon lost the election to John Kennedy, Kendall hired him as a lawyer for Pepsi. A few years later, Pepsi was one of the most powerful donors to Nixon’s successful presidential campaign in 1969.) Of course, Nixon immediately attended to Kendall’s and his Chilean friend’s concerns in a meeting at the White House and promised to personally take care of the matter. Agustín Edwards had painted an apocalyptic future for businesses in Chile if Allende were confirmed as president. His friend, Ambassador Korry, had added fuel to the fire: Allende could accelerate the nationalization of Chile’s major mining companies, which had begun under the conservative government of Eduardo Frei Montalva the previous year. These mining companies are the American Kennecott Utah Copper Company and Anaconda Copper Company, which had exploited the El Teniente deposit for most of the century.

The harassment of a weaker country, fake news and the search for an excuse to act by force are not new to American geopolitics since the independence of Texas in 1836. Nine years earlier, Salvador Allende had lost the 1964 elections to Eduardo Frei, whom the CIA had funded with ten million dollars at the time, more than half the budget of his party.[2] Without evidence or knowledge of this fact, Allende had conceded, and Chile had another six years of “peace and democracy.” But Allende and his followers were stubborn and determined to play by the rules of liberal democracy. When they ran in the 1970 elections, the U.S. government had no doubts. Although the statistics from his trusted man, Agustín Edwards, had painted an optimistic scenario for the CIA’s candidate, Jorge Alessandri Rodríguez, things had become increasingly difficult. The money sent to Alessandri had not had the same effect of swaying public opinion as in the 1958 and 1964 elections, in which Allende had come close to winning. Nor had the one and a half million dollars injected into Teletrece and the newspaper El Mercurio, champion of free competition and private enterprise. Agustín Edwards, the Chilean press mogul, the richest man in the country, and a philanthropist in his spare time, had been a CIA channel for many years, facilitating the propaganda operation aimed at manipulating public opinion called Operation Mockingbird (Sinsonte in Spanish, after the bird’s ability to deceive others by imitating their song; in Nahuatl, cenzon-tlahtol-e means four hundred songs). Under CIA supervision, Operation Mockingbird had infested the major American media outlets since the 1950s, promoting all kinds of conservative and, especially, extreme right-wing policies. This network of journalistic filters, inoculation of false information, and mercenary creation of opinion participated in various coups in Latin America, such as that of Guatemala in 1954, preventing American journalists deemed left-leaning from joining the group that was to report on that country.

Now, the operation aimed at strangling the economy of Chile is called FUBELT, in reference to “belt.” As Nixon had ordered, the Chilean economy was to scream in pain (the order was “make the economy scream”) through carefully planned strangulation. Eighty percent of the copper price is manipulated from Wall Street (as in the early 21st century, in coordination with Saudi Arabia, Washington will manipulate the price of oil to destabilize Venezuela, among other blockade measures) to punish the Chilean “regime.” To add to this, international banks cut off credit to Chile and, aided by intense propaganda planted in major media outlets and street rumors (within a few months, the CIA spends nearly six million dollars on covert propaganda, with the direct beneficiaries being the dominant media), the country begins to suffer the consequences, which will be attributed to the “inefficient and irresponsible government of the socialist Allende.” In less than two years, food begins to run short. There aren’t enough spare parts for cars and trucks. As Mohammad Mossadegh of Iran and the ambassador of Guatemala did in the same situation of harassment preceding a coup, Allende turns to the UN to denounce the interference and conspiracy of transnational corporations. With the same result. As in the two previous cases, as with Patrice Lumumba in the Congo and with so many others, Allende is demonized as a communist threat. This time, the plan could not fail as it did in Cuba. Chile was going to be another Guatemala.

But it’s not as simple as it was in Guatemala. As usual, the experts of the superpower ignore the deep realities of the countries they intervene in. What Nixon, Kissinger, and the CIA fail to understand is that Allende is neither an anomaly nor an outsider in Chilean politics. They ignore that, despite the commissions and training of thousands of officers in U.S. bases, a critical number of Chilean military personnel remain constitutionalists and refuse to take political sides, a reality that will change drastically during and after Pinochet’s dictatorship. They ignore that the vast majority of Chilean politicians, even many conservatives, also refuse to subvert the law to disadvantage the winner. The nationalization of the mines had begun in previous governments, and its culmination would not be decreed by Allende but by a vote in the Chilean Congress on July 11, 1971. Years later, a U.S. Congressional investigative committee will determine that the accusation that Allende would lead Chile to communism had no factual basis; the evidence was non-existent, and the probability was practically zero. According to the Church Commission, what was to be expected was that, despite longstanding social problems, both Allende and the rest of the Chilean political system would repeat a long tradition of stability and respect for the constitutional order. What was most likely to happen was that, after the unjust economic blockade, Allende would lose the next election. How could a president impose a communist system if the Chilean army was anti-communist? Contrary to the conclusions of the U.S. Congress, Latin American conservatives would continue to repeat the CIA’s invented narrative, injected with millions of dollars into the press of nearly every country, even well into the 21st century, decades after the Cold War ended. This phenomenon would occur more among Latin Americans than among Americans, because the ones inoculated were and would be Latin Americans; Americans would largely remain ignorant of their own government’s actions.

What is not a matter of probabilities is that Allende never violated the Chilean constitution and that Washington never had the legitimacy to proclaim itself the judge and police of the world, imposing dictatorships at its whims. After several months, and despite an intense campaign of covert propaganda in the Chilean press, radio, and television, the CIA fails to achieve the desired objective of Plan A. They contact legislators and try to persuade former president Eduardo Frei Montalva to support the first option, the blockade in the Chilean Congress. Frei disagrees, and the legislators ultimately confirm the winner, Allende. Despite the assassination of the Commander-in-Chief, General Schneider on October 24, 1970 (attributed to Allende’s supporters but orchestrated by the CIA due to Schneider’s opposition to intervening against the elected president), the Chilean Congress ratifies Allende’s appointment by a vote of 153 to 24, prompting Washington to proceed with Plan B.[3]

Nixon replaces Ambassador Korry with Nathaniel Davis and CIA Director, Richard Helms, with James Schlesinger to seek greater aggressiveness in executing the plan. The CIA channels millions of dollars, this time not to friendly politicians but to incite anger and popular dissatisfaction against the newly inaugurated government and to turn the Chilean army against the constitutional order, citing moral and patriotic reasons. Plan B will work perfectly. The strategy is effective: continue the economic and psychological warfare before the final solution. On September 21, Ambassador Edward Korry writes an official report to the National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger: “We will not let a single nut or bolt reach Chile while Allende is president. We will do everything in our power to condemn Chile and all Chileans to the greatest misery possible.”

Without delay, Nixon instructs Henry Kissinger to devise an action plan. Kissinger picks up the phone and requests collaboration from his old friend, David Rockefeller, chief executive of the family bank, Chase Manhattan Bank (later JPMorgan Chase), and one of the main banks in Chile. Nixon proceeds to cut off credit to that country but not the million-dollar aid to the opposition. Meanwhile, the ITT manager in Chile, John McCone (former CIA director, owner of 70 percent of the telephone companies in the country, and honored in 1987 by Ronald Reagan with the Presidential Medal of Freedom), had already announced his willingness to contribute one million dollars to destabilize Allende. His first donation had been $350,000 for the political campaign of Allende’s rival, Jorge Alessandri, which had been matched by multiple donations from other large U.S. corporations in Chile. Now he is ready to double the stakes. The old partner of big private business, the cursed government of Washington, is also ready.

1971. The Danger of a People’s Assembly in Bolivia

Washington DC. July 6, 1971—The Committee 40, the epicenter of the coup d’état that will take place a couple of years later in Chile against the democratic government of Salvador Allende, meets again to address another regional issue. Mr. Henry Kissinger, a prominent member of this commission, could not attend today’s meeting because he is busy with a more important matter. The White House has tasked the Committee with removing the new government of Bolivia, led by a military officer with leftist tendencies named Juan José Torres. The analysis of the situation begins with a rhetorical question: “Does anyone here believe it is possible to solve this problem by supporting an opposition lacking leadership?” The committee considers the new People’s Assembly established on January 19, where workers, miners, peasants, and students participate equally, to be one of the greatest threats inspired by the Soviets and allowed by the new regime. Charles Meyer (who a year earlier had actively participated in Chile’s elections and later denied any U.S. intervention in foreign elections) notes that the Popular Assembly might not be as bad as it seems, though it’s unclear if this is meant ironically. For William Broe, the Nationalist Revolutionary Movement, tamed by Washington after the successful 1952 Revolution, lacks the resources for propaganda, making it necessary to assist them in this aspect.[4] Johnson asks if we have previously interfered in Bolivian politics, and Broe reminds him that we supported the coup by General René Barrientos seven years ago.[5] That’s as far as the intelligence memory goes. Charles Meyer clarifies, “but back then we had a leader to support; now we have a car in motion and are searching for the driver.”

By then, Washington had approved one million dollars for the Bolivian military, but the new regime had not yet been notified. Now, the Committee is in favor of economic aid to the opposition. General Cushman insists that nothing good can be expected without taking action, but others believe that U.S. aid to the MNR (the former enemy) is a double-edged sword. Just like in the Bolivian army, there is a deep ideological divide within the opposition, and aid could either help or provoke a backlash. Finally, the committee agrees that a response from the ambassador is necessary. The MNR is highly disorganized, and keeping a secret in La Paz is nearly impossible. After all, concludes Committee 40, J. J. Torres is not the worst possible president, considering that what could follow is a civil war.

Three days later, Ambassador Ernest Siracusa sends his report to Washington suggesting the need for $410,000 for a coup. The funding must be limited and mostly allocated to propaganda to maintain some control over the coup planners. It is necessary to allocate some money to private groups, which are better organized and have already taken covert measures for the coup. This aid will be easier to conceal, as this group is the one with some money in Bolivia. Otherwise, “the politically sophisticated,” says the ambassador, would notice the Embassy’s involvement in the coup. But the political landscape is so fragmented that even a right-wing dictatorship wouldn’t guarantee the prevention of the strong “anti-imperialist” sentiment reigning in the country, which is why the ambassador has reservations about continuing to support coup plans. Plan B would be to maintain the loyal faction of the army and pressure Torres’ government through investments, which it will need for any reform.

On October 17, 1970, General Juan José Torres, more indigenous than mestizo, born into a humble family in Cochabamba, had become the new president of Bolivia. Unlike previous dictators, Jota did not blame the workers but rather capitalism and foreign companies for keeping his country in perpetual underdevelopment and dependence. A year earlier, in the government of Alfredo Ovando Candia (proclaimed president by another coup) J.J. Torres had promoted and achieved the nationalization of Bolivia’s oil wells, which were in the hands of the giant Gulf Oil Corporation. Shortly after, and following a year in power, on October 6, 1970, a new far-right military coup, led by General Rogelio Miranda, had overthrown Alfredo Ovando, accused of dangerously drifting towards the left. Before taking refuge in the Argentine Embassy, as a symbolic farewell gesture, Ovando had appointed his friend J.J. Torres as his successor. Blood flowed through the streets of Bolivia, and the army entered an open internal struggle that ended with the unexpected military victory of General J.J. Torres.

Torres is part of a new phenomenon of the sixties that would have a short life. He is one of the rare and few military figures with revolutionary, progressive, populist, or outright socialist ideas, like Juan Velasco in Peru, Líber Seregni in Uruguay, and Omar Torrijos in Panama, who would break with two hundred years of military service to the export oligarchy. To defend national sovereignty and Bolivia’s right to its resources, Torres had proposed an alliance of what he called the four pillars of the country: workers, students, peasants, and the military. This idea of giving voice and vote to indigenous people and the working class in a parliament called the People’s Assembly was considered, by the traditional ruling class and by the government of Richard Nixon, as an inspiration from the Soviet devil. To make matters worse, within a few months Torres increased the university budget and miners’ wages, created the State Bank for development, nationalized the tin mines, and expelled the United States Peace Corps.

As expected, a month after the meeting of the Committee 40 in Washington, on August 21, 1971, Torres would be overthrown by another coup d’état. Another general, one of those from the top, General Hugo Banzer, would have it easier. A descendant of Germans and (like so many other dictators) a graduate of the School of the Americas, Banzer would be supported by the German community in Bolivia and by the governments of the United States and Brazil. Participating in the coup would be the U.S. ambassador, Ernest Siracusa, who already had proven experience in the matter due to his involvement in the military coup organized by the CIA in 1954 against the democratically elected president of Guatemala, which returned that country to the United Fruit Company.

Exiled in Argentina, on June 2, 1976, J. J. Torres would be kidnapped and assassinated in Buenos Aires by members of Operation Condor. The same mafia of South American generals coordinated by General Augusto Pinochet and sponsored by the CIA that, by 1974, would have already assassinated in Buenos Aires, with a car bomb, General Carlos Prats and his wife Sofía Cuthbert. In September 1976, they would assassinate another Chilean from Salvador Allende’s government, Orlando Letelier, and Ronni Moffitt from the Institute for Policy Studies, with another car bomb in Washington DC. Operation Condor would be responsible for the assassination of at least 40,000 dissidents in different countries.

Meanwhile, the free press of Latin America, subsidized by CIA funds and by U.S. embassies, would continue to label each of these actions as “the fight for freedom,” “the fight against communism,” much as before the Cold War the same brutality was called “the fight for order” and “against the rebellion of blacks, Indians, and mestizos.”

  ^[1] Among its famous members are Richard Helms (removed as CIA director on April 2, likely for opposing an assassination plan for the president-elect, suggested by Kissinger), Attorney General John Newton Mitchell (known for his slogan “law and order” and sent to prison for a few months over the Watergate scandal), and David Packard (philanthropist and co-founder of Hewlett-Packard).

^[2] Agent Philip Agee would recall years later that the CIA had also actively participated in the 1958 elections to ensure that Allende did not win, which indeed happened. Considering the dollar investment per capita, the CIA invested more in its Chilean candidate than Johnson and Goldwater, the U.S. presidential candidates, invested in the 1964 election.

^[3] Over time, Eduardo Frei Montalva would become one of the few surviving critics of Augusto Pinochet’s regime. He died in 1982 from a dose of thallium, mustard gas, or sarin gas (a specialty of chemist Eugenio Berríos, an employee of DINA and the Nazi Colonia Dignidad) which had the advantage of leaving no traces in the victims’ bodies. This accusation would be vehemently denied by the newspapers of the Edwards family, El Mercurio and La Segunda. Berríos would participate in the execution of Orlando Letelier in Washington in 1976, in coordination with Cuban exiles from Miami, and would be executed in Uruguay in 1992 on Pinochet’s orders and in collaboration with members of the Uruguayan army, as part of Operation Condor which was still active during the new democratic period in the Southern Cone and aimed to ensure the silence of certain witnesses.

^[4] William V. Broe is an active CIA agent in the Middle East, South Africa, and South America. Two years later, before a congressional investigative committee in the United States, he will admit that, under orders from Richard Helms, he worked in collaboration with the ITT company to destabilize the government of Salvador Allende. Along with the executive manager Harold Geneen and the company’s vice president Edward Gerrity, he will coordinate the financial destabilization of Chile to create the conditions for the 1973 coup. After retiring, he will work as the treasurer of his church in Massachusetts and will spend most of his time tending to the roses in his garden. He will die on September 28, 2010, at the age of 97.

^[5] General René Barrientos will not appear on any list of graduates from the School of the Americas, but, like many other saviors of the fatherland, he took several courses at its headquarters in Panama.

(…)

1971. You’ll find more communists in Texas

Washington DC. November 27, 1971—Tomorrow is election day in Uruguay. Theodore Eliot, executive secretary of the State Department, concludes his report. Washington is concerned about the possibility that the new left-wing party, the Frente Amplio, could win the Montevideo mayoralty and does not want another Allende, even if it’s just at the municipal level. Resorting to a more indirect strategy than the one used in Chile, Washington has intervened in the electoral process, as it has done throughout previous decades by spreading convenient information, planting editorials, and influencing local repressive forces. Although far from the violence unleashed by generations in the tropical republics (derisively called “banana republics” or, simply, “republics of blacks“), now in Uruguay they also have the perfect excuse to combat a subversive group called the Tupamaros. Today, Saturday the 27th, Theodore Eliot has sent a memorandum to Henry Kissinger informing him of the good chances his preferred candidate has, though he also warns that in Uruguay “there is widespread dissatisfaction, especially among young people from the middle class due to the lack of opportunities; the Tupamaros phenomenon is basically a middle-class revolution against a system that does not offer opportunities for participation.”[1]

One of the most stable and developed countries in Latin America during the first half of the century (the world’s first football power with a population of just two million, with the most progressive laws in the world, with free health and education systems that reduced illiteracy to almost zero, and with social security that did not even exist in the United States until Franklin Roosevelt) had entered a slow and persistent economic and social decline since the 1950s. By then, the Colorado Party of the founder of modern Uruguay, the progressive José Batlle y Ordoñez, was in the process of becoming a conservative force alongside its rival, the Blanco Party. As a result, progressives began to be pushed to the margins of the political and media spectrum, and new political options, paradoxically, were labeled as foreign and dangerous for not carrying the white or red colors of the traditional parties.

For Washington, the problem was different: there was no way it would allow the Monroe Doctrine of 1823, which by then had already changed its name and excuses several times, to be questioned. On the contrary, it needed to extend it from its backyard in the tropical republics to the colder regions of the Southern Cone as a form of prevention, though to do so it needed to extend its centuries-old habit of provoking or installing military dictatorships “to bring order to chaos.”[2] As CIA agent Philip Agee would recognize based on his previous experiences on the continent, this country was harder to corrupt precisely because of its long-established popular education.

The emergence of an armed left-wing subversive group that could justify and radicalize Washington’s previous public and secret intervention practices took time but eventually arrived. The Tupamaros, a Guevarist group, had been founded a few years after Che Guevara’s visit to Uruguay and despite the Che’s own contrary recommendation. On August 17, 1961, just a few months after the Bay of Pigs fiasco, Che would have stated in a speech at the University of the Republic’s auditorium: “I have the pretension to say that I know America and that in some way I have visited each of its countries, and I can assure you that in our America, under current conditions, there is no country where, as in Uruguay, expressions of ideas are allowed… You have something that must be protected, which is precisely the possibility of expressing your ideas; the possibility of advancing through democratic channels as far as it is possible to go.” That afternoon, a Chilean senator named Salvador Allende listened attentively beside him. As the crowd exited, someone had fired a shot, and the bullet, probably intended for Che, killed the history professor Arbelio Ramírez. Someone had managed to refute the most conciliatory speech of the famous revolutionary with a single shot. It was the first unsolved assassination in the armed struggle of the Cold War in that country, as is typical in cases planned by top-tier secret agencies. Some would speculate about the professor’s friendship with the family of a Spanish woman who worked as an informant for the Soviet embassy. Surely not by coincidence, the Cuban CIA agent, Orlando Bosch, was in the crowd that afternoon. Bosch had already participated in various operations on the continent. Among his more than one hundred terrorist attacks, his masterpieces would be (in collaboration with another Cuban CIA agent labeled by the FBI as a dangerous terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles) the bomb detonated on Cubana de Aviación, which would cost the lives of 73 people, and the car bomb that would kill the former minister of Salvador Allende, Orlando Letelier, and his secretary in the very capital of the United States. Just as Bosch, Posada Carriles, and dozens of other terrorists were systematically condemned and then pardoned in the United States (most lived in luxurious homes in Miami), neither was the terrorism of the native right-wing thoroughly investigated in Uruguay, let alone the multiple activities of the CIA, which preceded even the creation of the well-known left-wing guerrilla group, the Tupamaros.

Before Agee’s arrival, in 1957 Howard Hunt (one of the CIA’s masterminds in the propaganda campaign that culminated in the overthrow of Jacobo Árbenz in Guatemala three years earlier) had been assigned to the Montevideo station.[3] Shortly after, Jacobo Árbenz himself had arrived with his family from Czechoslovakia and rented a house a few blocks from Hunt’s residence. Both coincidentally met at a social gathering, but Hunt, resisting the temptation of his arrogance, restrained himself and, glass in hand, did not reveal the truth to his victim, whom he still called a dictator in 2007. The new U.S. ambassador, John Woodward, an idealist against interventionist policies, had told him he hoped his new mission would not be to do in Uruguay what he had done in Guatemala. Hunt, confident in his independence on diplomatic and legal matters, informed him that his sole objective was to prevent communists from coming to power in Uruguay. Ambassador Woodward replied, “You won’t find more communists here in Uruguay than in Texas.”

According to Hunt and the previous ambassador, the conservative president Luis Batlle Berres was anti-American, and the fact that Uruguay, along with Mexico and Argentina, was one of the three countries with a Soviet Union embassy, was proof. For this reason and others, Hunt had recruited Benito Nardone, an amateur journalist and mediocre politician, unqualified but media-savvy and with a large rural audience thanks to his CX4 Radio Rural program that aired at 11:30 in the morning, just during the break and mate conversation before lunch. Against all forecasts and Ambassador Woodward’s polls, Nardone, known as Chicotazo, ended up winning the 1958 presidential elections, demonstrating the power of Hunt and the CIA in fine-tuned work. Like Washington, Moscow had its spies working in Uruguay under the cover of its embassy. Unlike Washington, there are no records of coups d’état or bloody dictatorships funded by Moscow.[4]

In the sixties, social protests had increased as Washington’s covert actions in the country had been in the sixties. The highest positions in the police had been replaced by individuals trained by the CIA and torture in police stations, according to their own agents, had become a common practice. Between 1963 and 1965, the guerrilla group Tupamaros was founded, giving the repressive forces an excellent excuse in a context of widespread economic, social, and moral decline. Soon after, and long before the military dictatorship, as part of the anti-subversive struggle, the National Directorate of Information and Intelligence would operate death squads, in addition to carrying out illegal detentions and interrogations.

But the greatest fear of Washington and the Creole oligarchy was not the Tupamaros but the Frente Amplio. It was not the bullets but the votes that hurt the interests of the transnational corporations and the Creole elites a thousand times more. On August 27, 1971, the US embassy in Buenos Aires sent a secret telegram to the State Department detailing the concern of the military government of Alejandro Lanusse about the elections in Uruguay. The embassy foresaw that the Argentine government, with or without the help of Brazil, would intervene secretly in Uruguay to prevent a victory by the Frente Amplio in the elections “through a self-coup led by President Jorge Pacheco Areco”. In March 1970, Pacheco Areco had met with the Argentine dictator Juan Carlos Onganía, and in February of the following year with his successor, General Levingston. Soon after, Argentina sent specialized interrogation equipment. In December 1970 and July 1971, there were contacts between the top echelons of Argentina and Brazil. The military attachés of Brazil informed their US counterparts (USMILAT) that a long time ago, during the previous dictatorships of Onganía and Artur da Costa e Silva, there had been an agreement to intervene in Uruguay whenever they deemed it necessary.

However, Lanusse himself faced strong popular opposition in Argentina and the option of a direct intervention was replaced by support for President Pacheco Areco to carry out a self-coup that would prevent the Frente Amplio from taking power in case of a favorable vote for the left, as had happened in Chile a year earlier and for which Washington had already arranged a new coup d’état. Citing direct sources linked to the high command, the US Embassy reported: “This plan is already underway”. Later: “The recent events in Bolivia, in which the government of Argentina was involved, have encouraged its military to repeat the same solution” (referring to the coup d’état by the ultra-conservative General Hugo Banzer against the progressive General J. J. Torres) “The embassy expects the government of Argentina to do what is necessary to provide military and economic support to the government of Uruguay against the threat of a possible Frente Amplio victory”.

Now, for the crucial elections of 1971, Washington and Brasília have already ensured that the left-wing party Frente Amplio receives a poor vote and that the Partido Blanco, the party of Nardone (now positioned a few steps to the left with its nationalist candidate Wilson Ferreira Aldunate) loses the elections. After months of recounts and allegations of fraud, the candidate of the Partido Colorado, now in the hands of the militarist right wing, will emerge victorious. Juan María Bordaberry will win a few thousand votes more than Wilson Ferreira and will proceed to deliver the country to a military dictatorship two months before the coup in Chile. That same year, in the White House, Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Vernon Walters, and other Washington officials personally thanked the Brazilian dictator Emílio Garrastazu Médici for manipulating the elections in Uruguay, as they had previously collaborated in Chile, and for being the secret arm of the United States in the repression of social movements in Latin America and in the blockade of Cuba as a member of the OAS.

After the return of monitored democracy in 1984, the military first and then the conservative politicians would not tire of justifying the Uruguayan dictatorship as a consequence of the actions of the Tupamaros and foreign influence. Like most armed groups of Marxist, indigenist, or some other variation of 20th-century leftist ideology in Latin America, the Tupamaros had emerged in the 1960s, at least a century after the numerous dictatorships that Washington began to implant in its backyard on that continent. But the tradition of armed rebellions is even older, dating back to the early days of Iberian conquest and colonization on the continent. The 16th-century pattern, the same history praised by Hernán Cortés, denounced by Bartolomé de las Casas, and endured by rebels like Hatuey or Enriquillo, is repeated in other scenarios a thousand and one times throughout the 20th century and exploited by the empire of the moment: the power of the colonial and exporting elite in the ports, and the Indians, the Blacks, and the white rebels hidden in the mountains. It is no coincidence that a secret analysis on subversive activities from the State Department dated December 31, 1976, asserts that “terrorism in Latin America has indigenous roots.” It is no coincidence that the name Tupamaros, in a predominantly European and urban country like Uruguay, alludes to the Peruvian rebel Túpac Amaru II.

In Uruguay, the 1973 coup d’état was not aimed at defeating the Tupamaros, who had already been defeated.[5] The goal was to eliminate the threat of a popular option through the power of the vote. In Chile, the coup d’état was not possible before Allende’s victory, but after. This was the difference.

In Argentina, the disillusionment of Peronists with the new right-wing Peronism and the subversive experience created by Onganía’s dictatorship in the 60s had formed the perfect cocktail for chaos and, above all, for a new excuse for the repression forces. What is better than disorder for the professionals of order? Just a few months before the 1976 elections, the military decided to stage another coup d’état and prevent the victory of the left wing of Peronism, regrouped behind Héctor Cámpora and with serious chances of reaching the Casa Rosada.

When, a few years later, in the Southern Cone, the domino effect of military dictatorships stained the entire region with blood and arbitrariness, Washington would have to justify itself. Language would remain, as always, the primary tool and the first victim. In a State Department Memorandum sent to Tony Lake dated December 31, 1976, the state terrorism that would ravage the region thanks to these international manipulation policies would barely merit tangential references, such as concern over the negative perception of other countries regarding Washington’s support for “countries that do not observe internationally recognized standards” on human rights. Leftist groups are repeatedly labeled as terrorists, while the massacres carried out by governments and right-wing paramilitary groups who “kidnap, rape, torture, and murder dissidents… suspected of leftist sympathies” are referred to as excesses. The closure of the parliament in Uruguay is mentioned as a consequence of the fight against terrorists, while “in the governments of the Southern Cone, there is a clear tendency to reject international concerns about human rights as foreign interference in internal affairs… something that cannot be allowed.” The future Foreign Minister of the dictatorship in Uruguay, Juan Carlos Blanco, will protest when, during the Carter administration, the Koch Amendment limits Washington’s aid to friendly dictatorships, considering it an unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of those countries. The U.S. ambassador in Montevideo, Ernest Siracusa, in defense of the dictatorship, will call it “a civilian government with a strong military influence.”

Years, decades, generations later, the elites in political and social power will not tire of repeating that, had it not been for leftist rebel groups like the Tupamaros in Uruguay or the Montoneros in Argentina, the military dictatorships would never have existed. This fabrication will become a dogma. Like the traumas of the dictatorships, it will survive in the generations to come.[6] 

  [1] Before the Tupamaros, groups known as the Hunger Commandos emerged, which raided food trucks from the Manzanares supermarket chain to distribute the food in the ironically named cantegriles, the new settlements of slums on the outskirts of Montevideo.

^[2] The chaos of the Indians, the Blacks, and the Hispanics in the United States was also controlled by a long dictatorship, but it was never military and was always called democracy.

^[3] Howard Hunt will be investigated in the United States for the assassination of Kennedy due to a recording made in Montevideo two days before the president’s assassination, in which something referred to as “a matter of extreme importance to the country” was mentioned. In 1975, he will be convicted of conspiracy in the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. In 2007, on his deathbed, he would acknowledge that the CIA organized the assassination of Kennedy. The testimony of his family members was deemed unreliable.

[4] Not even the Cuban Revolution was orchestrated in Moscow. The Soviet Union became an ally and strategic subsidiary of Cuba after Eisenhower and Nixon snubbed Fidel Castro‘s visit to the White House and, especially, after the failed military invasion of the Bay of Pigs in 1961, the ensuing sabotage and terrorism, legal harassment, and massive economic and diplomatic blockade.

[5] The armed defeat of the Tupamaros wasn’t even the merit of the army. Many months before the 1973 coup, this group had already been diminished by the police, also under the influence of Washington and the CIA for over a decade. The very creation and organization of the DNII (National Directorate of Information and Intelligence) had been the work of Washington’s envoys, directed by those sent to Washington, such as its director Víctor Castiglioni. The DNII also specialized in the kidnapping and torture of dissidents not linked to armed groups but suspected of thinking differently.

[6] On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh, a far-right terrorist and Gulf War veteran, would succeed in detonating a bomb that destroyed a federal building in Oklahoma, killing 168 people and leaving over 600 severely injured. In the years to come, far-right terrorist attacks in the United States would proliferate by the thousands, while the mainstream media remained distracted, entirely preoccupied with the minority cases of Islamic terrorism. Not even laws limiting civil liberties would be passed (as was the case with the Patriot Act against critics after 9/11 in 2001). No one would propose a coup in Washington to fight domestic terrorism. There would be no narrative to justify it, nor foreign propaganda to promote it.

(…)

1973. If not by peaceful means, then by force

Santiago, Chile, September 11, 1973—General Augusto Pinochet, elevated to the rank of Commander-in-Chief of the Chilean army on August 23 by the elected president Salvador Allende, bombards the government house where the president is located. As is customary, the generals leading the patriotic actions never lead from the front but from behind their powerful armies. With insults and from a distance, he orders that there be no possible surrender of the enemy. La Moneda burns under the bombs. After a farewell speech on Radio Magallanes, reminiscent of Jacobo Árbenz’s farewell in Guatemala twenty years earlier, Allende shoots himself with the AK-47 gifted to him by Fidel Castro, to avoid being taken prisoner, which the press and encyclopedias would erroneously classify as a suicide.

At 9:00 PM, General Pinochet, with a shrill and effeminate voice reminiscent of Francisco Franco’s, announces on television: “The armed and police forces have acted today only under the patriotic inspiration of saving the country from the chaos into which the Marxist government of Salvador Allende was rapidly plunging it.”

General Augusto Pinochet was considered a military man with no political ambitions (much like future coup leader General Rafael Videla before being promoted by President Isabel Perón in Argentina), which is why he had been the natural replacement for General Carlos Prats, a staunch constitutionalist who, in turn, had replaced General René Schneider, assassinated in a CIA plot for obstructing their plans for destabilization and a coup against Allende. On August 2, during a meeting at the El Bosque military base, officers of the Brazilian dictatorship had informed the CIA about which generals would support the coup, based on their experience with the CIA-promoted coup in Brazil. They even went as far as writing the new dictator’s first speech before the United Nations, presenting a crime against humanity as an act of defending humanity.

In Washington, Henry Kissinger held a press conference and, echoing the exculpatory speech of Secretary of State John Foster Dulles after destroying democracy in Guatemala in 1954, denied any involvement of the U.S. government in the military coup in Chile. Kissinger followed, word for word, the CIA manual which, for decades, demanded that everything done must be done “allowing for plausible deniability” and, under any circumstance, “no admission of involvement in any act should ever be made, even if all evidence points to the contrary.”

Another social chaos decided and planned by the CIA and the government of Richard Nixon with the help of another Latin American patriotic army. The evidence will be revealed later due to the investigations by the Church Committee of the U.S. Senate in 1975, the confessions of those involved decades later, and the documents declassified under the Freedom of Information Act. The secret minutes of the meetings in Washington will leave no room for doubt.

The Plan B of Commission 40 in Washington was a complete success. However, there were several resistances. On August 9, one of the CIA’s operations chiefs (name not declassified) was uncertain: “I fear we are going to repeat the same mistake we made in 1959, when we pushed Fidel Castro into the arms of the Soviet Union“. In Chile, General René Schneider, commander-in-chief of the Armed Forces, had blocked the CIA’s plans, considering it unacceptable for the military to intervene in politics, let alone stage a coup. To remove him, the CIA had contacted Generals Roberto Viaux and Camilo Valenzuela to assassinate him and, in the process, blame Allende’s supporters. Before any response, the Agency had sent them twenty thousand dollars to “keep them financially lubricated.” On October 21, a diplomatic shipment containing weapons, grenades, and ammunition arrived at Santiago’s Arturo Merino Airport. U.S. Colonel Paul Wimert, a friend of General Schneider, was tasked with picking up the weapons and delivering them to General Viaux. CIA agent Henry Hecksher handed Wimert 250,000 to invest in the assassination of his friend, and on October 22, General Schneider was ambushed while driving his car. He had tried to defend himself, but five men surrounded him and shot him with weapons still gleaming and smelling new. An official CIA report in 2000 will acknowledge that the agency had provided weapons and, after Schneider’s assassination, had given the assassins $35,000 ($241,000 at 2020 value) “to maintain secret contact, the group’s goodwill, and for humanitarian reasons.”

Schneider died three days later, and President Eduardo Frei appointed General Carlos Prats in his place. But Prats was another constitutionalist and, like his predecessor and friend, ensured that the congressional vote in favor of Allende was respected, which is why he would be harassed in various ways. Prats became the target of protests and attempted lynchings. The CIA paid a group of generals’ wives to organize a demonstration in front of his house, which ended in a brawl and Prats’s resignation as Minister of Defense and as Commander in Chief of the Army. The third in line of succession was General Augusto Pinochet, who a year later would succeed in assassinating Prats in Argentina. Although recommended by Prats himself to replace him, as he considered him a professional and apolitical military officer, Pinochet was known at the School of the Americas in Panama and, according to the CIA, the tall, German-like general was committed to the operation. Finally, the CIA had managed to clear the path for Plan B and invested another million, bringing the total at that point to nine million dollars. Part of that money went to support strikes, like the truckers’ strike. As expected, more and more people began protesting in the streets due to uncontrolled inflation and increasingly frequent power outages.

 Although on July 3, 1972, the New York Times had published the report of one of its correspondents identified as Mr. Merriam, revealing the bribes of ITT in Chile, neither Nixon nor Kissinger cared, as their predecessors once had. Years earlier, the Pentagon had financed and organized various infiltrations in South American academia through programs like Project Camelot in Chile, which had to be suspended by the then Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, on July 8, 1965, “due to the bad publicity it had received.” The same project had to continue in more subtle and secretive ways. By then, the United States Department of Defense had already gathered sufficient information and was studying possible scenarios for a military coup in Chile. According to a computer model named Política, and based on the needs of its programmers, the computer’s recommendation was clear: Allende should not survive a potential victory of his party. The same program predicted that, after his assassination, Chile would remain stable.

 According to the Cuban CIA agent, Antonio Veciana (leader of the failed attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro in Santiago two years earlier), “Salvador Allende was a greater danger than Fidel Castro because he had come to power through elections.” Transferred to the pleasures of Rio de Janeiro and protected by Brazil’s military dictatorship, his boss, the agent David Atlee Phillips, a veteran of the successful coup against Árbenz in Guatemala and of the Bay of Pigs fiasco in Cuba, had been tasked with organizing the destabilization of Chile, a country that brought him nostalgic memories of his youth. This time, the strategy consists not only of applying the principle of “plausible deniability” but also of fragmenting the knowledge of the plan so that no one within the team carrying out the plot would be able to know what is happening or what has occurred. Not even President Nixon, who is the most interested party in the success of the operation. The Secretary of State, William Rogers, will also not be informed of the entire plan. Both he and Ambassador Korry were to participate in the diplomatic efforts to undermine Allende’s government, but they were not to be aware of the details of Track II, approved by Washington and, since then, in the hands of the CIA. On September 4 and 21, 1970, Ambassador Korry had already met with Brazilian diplomats to begin sabotaging the elected president. As a result, the Brazilian dictatorship, a product of another Washington plot, collaborated in organizing social unrest in Chile (supporting terrorist groups like Patria y Libertad) and would later advise the new Pinochet dictatorship with its nearly decade-long experience.[1]

At the National Security Council meeting on November 6, 1970, Richard Nixon had confirmed an obvious truth that would be heavily disguised by Latin American patriotic discourse: “I will never agree with the policy of reducing the power of the military in Latin America. They are centers of power subject to our influence. The others, the intellectuals, are not subject to our influence.” Between 1950 and 1970 alone, four thousand Chilean officers had been trained at various U.S. military bases, most of them at the School of the Americas in Panama, and had received at least $163 million in “strategic aid” from successive Washington administrations. During the same period, an army of economics students from the Catholic University of Chile had been recruited and sent to the University of Chicago to study under the doctrines of Milton Friedman, who would later become popularly known as the Chicago Boys, architects of the neoliberal model forcibly imposed by the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship, which, in turn, proves Antonio Gramsci’s theories about clerical, organic intellectuals, functional to power.

Agent David Phillips, one of the masterminds behind the Guatemala coup d’état, had flown from Rio to Washington and spent several nights smoking and drinking whisky, unable to sleep. Almost as much as when the great invasion of Cuba failed. In his memoirs, he acknowledges that he was tormented by the fact that they were going to eliminate another democratically elected president, someone who had not broken any law, written or moral, this time because he had been recognized as a Marxist or with a Marxist past. But moral qualms are soothed with a bit of cream. Phillips reflects on the Bay of Pigs fiasco and comes to the conclusion that he needed and that four years later he would publish in his memoirs The Night Watch: “my greatest remorse about the Bay of Pigs fiasco was the poor planning of the invasion, a botched job; it was not a matter of morality.” The fascist group “Patria y Libertad” receives $35,500 from the CIA (over $200,000 at 2020 value) and immediately organizes a march through the streets of Santiago. Shortly after, intelligence officer Henry Hecksher reports: “We have been tasked with causing chaos in Chile and we have delivered a plan, which cannot be executed without bloodshed.” According to the most basic psychology manual, individuals capable of committing crimes with an absolute absence of emotions are defined as psychopaths. When they are many and operate organized by a state, they are called imperialists.

One day before the coup d’état carried out by General Augusto Pinochet, a cable from agent Jack Devine had informed Washington that “the coup will begin on September 11. The three Chilean military forces and the Carabineros of Chile are committed to the plan. A post-factum statement will be read on Radio Agricultura at 7:00 a.m. the following day.” The military begins to move in the early hours and precisely at 7:00 the harassment begins. All radio stations are shut down except the opposition station Radio Agricultura, which Pinochet uses to announce the country’s fate. At 9:30 a.m., Allende delivers a farewell message from La Moneda, similar to that of Jacobo Árbenz twenty years earlier. But Allende is prepared to die. The military reports “unexpected resistance at La Moneda.” British Hawker Hunter aircraft bomb the presidential palace in a way that experts claim could only have been done by American pilots.[2] At 2:45, General Javier Palacios Ruhmann reports: “Mission accomplished. La Moneda taken. President dead.”

Mining companies receive hundreds of millions of dollars from the Chilean state. ITT alone secures a check for $128 million. Two weeks after the bloody coup, a popular procession carries the coffin of the poet Pablo Neruda. As he is laid to rest in his tomb, someone shouts “Comrade Pablo Neruda!” and the crowd responds “Present!”. The cemetery is surrounded by military forces. The National Stadium becomes a packed concentration camp. On October 8, the morgues report 9,796 corpses, most showing signs of torture. 27,255 tortured individuals survive as best they can. Dissidents will be kidnapped, tortured, and executed by the thousands, even in distant countries. A US Congressional investigative committee concludes that there is not a single piece of evidence connecting Allende with Moscow or any potential threat to the United States. The militaristic fanatics in Latin America do not care: for generations, they will continue to repeat the CIA manual.

Meanwhile, in Chile several military officers die unexpectedly, such as General Óscar Bonilla Bradanovic in a helicopter accident shortly after denouncing the tortures he witnessed. Others are retired. If before the coup the majority of army officers were constitutionalists, they now have no place, and the Chilean army is reconverted into the classic model of a Latin American army in service to international capital and in the name of defending the homeland.

The coup d’état will be a reactionary act but also a form of fascist revolution that will produce fractures and permanent changes in Chilean society. The aggressive implementation of neoliberalism by the Chicago economists, greater social intolerance, and the near-definitive ideologization of the armed forces will cast their shadow over several generations, even after Pinochet’s departure from government.

Churches and armies will begin to persecute and assassinate liberation theologians while restoring their traditional role. In 1954, a pastoral letter drafted by the CIA to bishops Mariano Rossell and Arellano had warned about “the enemies of God and the Fatherland” in Guatemala. The bishops and the church of that country joined the coup d’état against Árbenz and blessed the genocide that followed. In 1974, a group of 32 Pentecostal and Presbyterian pastors will publish a letter justifying the actions of the Chilean Armed Forces as a “response from God to the prayers of all believers who see in Marxism the satanic force of darkness in its fullest expression.”

In 1976, Henry Kissinger will arrive in Santiago and deliver to General Pinochet the speech he plans to read the following day. He assures him that no mention of Human Rights refers to Chile but rather to communist regimes. “You are a victim of international leftism,” says the powerful Kissinger, as a form of consolation. He then adds: “We want to help you. You have done a great service to the West by overthrowing Allende.”

Kissinger had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1973.

Exactly in 1973.

  [1] Besides logistical support, the Brazilian dictator, General Emílio Garrastazu Médici, supported Chile’s new dictatorship with hundreds of millions of dollars, part of Richard Nixon’s backing of Garrastazu Médici.

^[2] On November 24, El Mercurio publishes an interview with the supposed pilots in which one of them admits “initially being concerned about attacking their own country” but later “feeling satisfaction for the mission accomplished.” When a year later the planes arrive in Scotland for maintenance, the engineers’ union will refuse to approach the instruments of the coup in Chile. In 2011, two of the supposed pilots’ names will be revealed: Fernando Rojas Vender, alias Rufián and López Tobar.