While the US mourns the punch in the throat it received because an inbred, Ivy-League Legacy didn’t want his August vacation interrupted by an intelligence briefing, the rest of the world remembers a different anniversary.
On this day 50 years ago, President Salvador Allende’s legitimately elected government was pushed out by its murderous military. This led to at least two decades of terror for the people during the inhumane Pinochet dictatorship. He had hundreds of political enemies murdered and thousands tortured. Oh, General Augusto Pinochet stepped down in 1990 but he made sure he had a permanent senatorial seat, in case this new democracy got some crazy ideas again. Plus he pardoned himself, evading justice all the way to his death in the UK from cancer.
It all happened thanks to Tricky Dick, Kissinger the War Criminal and our bumbling CIA (it still is). Pinochet continued to receive support via numerous other “freedom fighters” like England’s Maggie Thatcher, St. Reagan and obviously the corrupt Bush Dynasty. To Republicans, Tories, cowardly Democrats and other right-wingers, what’s a few thousand dead innocents to keep the Soviet Union from having a naval base in Santiago? Hell, it was even OK for Chilean agents aided by anti-Castro Cuban thugs to murder Allende’s former ambassador Orlando Letelier via car bomb in DC circa 1976. An American citizen was also killed and others injured. The CIA knew and allegedly Kissinger rescinded the Chilean plan. Not likely, he probably green lit it despite them doing this in the nation’s capital.
So why did we bother? Salvador Allende was a Socialist but given Amerika’s blatant idiocy and lazy corporate-owned media, the connotation equals Soviet Communist. Allende was critical of the US’s bullying and interference; how dare the Chileans have a right to their own destiny! He gave Tricky Dick the finger by having Fidel Castro visit too. Regardless of the Cuban dictator’s awfulness, many in Latin and South America admire his success at continuing to be a nuisance with the inept CIA. However, the final straw was Allende’s plans to nationalize Chile’s resources and other things…they own. American and European corporations screamed “Communism!” Chile’s right wingers/thugs with CIA aid climbed out from under their rocks and pulled off a military coup. Allende killed himself when the siege at his office was going to end in his arrest, and likely execution.
In the aftermath, numerous, stupid Chilean Liberals cooperated thinking, “I have nothing to hide nor anything to worry about.” I’m sure many had this carved on their gravestones as their epitaphs. Pinochet obviously tightened his iron grip on Chile and destroyed the economy via the University of Chicago assholes’ free-market a la Milton Friedman’s wet dream. These douche nozzles never grow tired of being wrong as they tried to implement it on Iraq in 2003 and New Orleans in 2006. Fearing a coup against him, Pinochet quickly fired the Chicago Boys by the Eighties and restored many policies the Socialists initiated.
Today, Chile and its people continue to remember how they lost their democracy thanks to American and European greed. I do hope they’re on better footing while the US needs a big kick in the ass to correct our sham of a system.
